Not necessarily. Do you need someone to tell you how to behave in public?

Of course not.

And, funny thing, I'll bet most of the poison pen posters don't think they're
behaving badly (by their own standards, at least). One of that crowd recently
made some very childish remarks about the sexuality of some other posters, then
tried to deny he'd done so, and in the end said "well, you would have thought
it was funny if you had a properly developed sense of humor."
Do I suspect this is the way a guy like that
behaves when not on-line? Absolutely.

in The Real World(tm), life generally goes
quite a bit more smoothly when we are courteous to others.

It's dangerous to presume that others have
any interest in life going smoothly. Some kids just love to break things.

On 08 Nov 2003 06:52:53 GMT, (Gould 0738) wrote:

Not necessarily. Do you need someone to tell you how to behave in public?

Of course not.

And, funny thing, I'll bet most of the poison pen posters don't think they're
behaving badly (by their own standards, at least).

That would surprise me. Most people, I believe *do* have reasonable standards
of behavior--especially as regards fundamental courtesy and civility. I think
it's a matter of how they choose to behave in a particular newsgroup.

One of that crowd recently
made some very childish remarks about the sexuality of some other posters, then
tried to deny he'd done so, and in the end said "well, you would have thought
it was funny if you had a properly developed sense of humor."
Do I suspect this is the way a guy like that
behaves when not on-line? Absolutely.

I don't disagree with you--but people who behave boorishly in Real Life may
simply take that behavior to extremes on Usenet, since there isn't the potential
for consequences here that there are IRL. Threats and posturing
notwithstanding.

in The Real World(tm), life generally goes
quite a bit more smoothly when we are courteous to others.

It's dangerous to presume that others have
any interest in life going smoothly. Some kids just love to break things.

You may be right. For my part, I'd just as soon assume that *most* people would
rather be in a courteous environment--and will take others to task for behaving
badly.

Peer pressure can be a powerful force.

Joe Parsons