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Re: The Merry Rose




Poster: jsussman@cpcug.org (Jeffrey Sussman)

Greetings from Richard!

>> This type of forum, like all newsgroups and e-mail vehicles, lack key
>> components to human communication that are necessary for dealing with highly
>> emotional issues.  This had led to the creation of the smiley faces and such
>> that are used to, only partially, make up for this lack.
>
>I have heard this before, and it has always been a great wonder to me,
>since I know that people wrote letters to one another for centuries
>without any smiley faces.  Indeed, in ancient times, and the early
>part of the Period, they did not even have punctuation!  Consider for
>a moment how such a lack would make ambiguous the following excerpt of
>a poem by the esteemed Mar Yaakov HaMizrachi:
> ....

There are several important differences between letter writing and e-mail.
E-mail is faster.  It can be conducted at almost conversation speed.  People
are less careful when writing e-mail.  This is an over-generalization but
we've all seen examples.  E-mail have be very short, one or two sentences.
Long messages, in fact, are frequently skipped by readers and have "special"
labels.

In fact, I would ammend my statment about lasting effects.  The Merry Rose
can have dramatic impact on Atlantia in that individuals can be hurt,
angered, encouraged, emboldened or informed.  These effects are important
and are the reason I participate.  

What we can't do, from this list, is make cultural, social, organizational
or systemic changes to the way Atlantia or the SCA works.  I make this
statement not entirely convinced that it is correct.  I'd love to hear some
counter-examples.  My jaded view (old fart alert) led me to generalize this
view to all of the activity that goes on on our forum.

Wishing I had treated my earlier post more like a letter,
Duke Richard Fitzgilbert

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