[Tweeters] ADMINISTRATIVE - Inappropriate Topics reminder

[Hal Opperman UW via Tweeters]

Every new subscriber receives a Welcome message, beginning with a statement of what Tweeters is about. Please reread and reflect on these two lead paragraphs:

"TWEETERS IS A GENERAL EMAIL LIST DEVOTED TO BIRDS AND BIRDING, especially in Washington State and the Cascadia region. Bird sightings, trip reports, field identification issues, and the status, distribution, habitats, natural history, and biology of birds, provide the prevalent—but not exclusive—subject matter of the list. Postings on topics of conservation, ecology, and wild critters other than birds, are acceptable, indeed encouraged.

 "TWEETERS IS UNMODERATED. No list “bosses” screen messages for posting. Subscribers themselves serve as a self-moderating community, governed by guidelines."

The most important takeaway is “This is your list. You, the community, make it what it is.”

The Guidelines outlined in the Welcome message usually work well on their own. Every now and then, however, a reminder is needed when the list seem to be going off the rails. And so, once again, please reread and reflect upon this paragraph:

"GUIDELINES: AVOIDING INAPPROPRIATE TOPICS. Tweeters is a forum for discussion of birds, birding, and the natural world broadly construed. In the interests of all, please limit your postings to topics that fall within these bounds. In addition, exercise judgment and common sense to STEER CLEAR OF “HOT-BUTTON” ISSUES that all too often provoke inflammatory rhetoric and unenlightened debate of a purely adversarial nature. The first sign of any such disruption of civil discourse can be expected to trigger rapid intervention by the list administrators.”

The Guideline then lists several examples of notoriously objectionable hot-button topics, among them cats (pro or con), hunting (pro or con), religion, and partisan politics. In recent months what now seems on the way to becoming yet another chronically inflammatory topic has invaded the list — bird naming rights, passionately contested between two bands of adherents, the Jets and the Sharks of our otherwise peaceful birding forum. 

PLEASE DROP THIS TOPIC. NOW. Two prior warnings only succeeded in driving it underground briefly. Henceforward offenders will be disciplined appropriately.

Let me end on an affirmative note, with this quote from the original Tweeters Charter published many years ago. It is still our ideal.

"Tweeters includes a broad spectrum of people, from novices who want to share their enjoyment of birds and find out more about them, to expert birders who spend all the time they can in the field, to professional biologists. There is room on Tweeters for anybody who is interested in, or has something to say about, birds and bird-related topics. All postings are intended both to convey information and to stimulate others to ask questions, respond, join the debate. The goal is an opening toward genuine understanding of birds, ourselves, the world we share, and how we talk about these things, conducted in the finest tradition of civil discourse.”

Thank you, and good birding!

Hal Opperman
Tweeters List Co-Administrator
(with Elaine Chuang)