3 Sep 2005 lkcl   » (Master)

one of the many useful things i picked up from rusty russell in 2000 was a technique for defusing hostile situations on mailing lists.

the technique is to not so much ignore the hostility, not to react to it, not to refute it, but to do this:

1) to assume that the hostility is an oversight or a mistake on the part of the writer

2) to offer to rewrite the writer's message as if it was not hostile

3) to assume that 2) is okay to do and to explicity mention that you're making such an assumption, and then proceed to rewrite the message.

4) to reply to the rewritten message _not_ the original one, _without_ being hostile yourself.

the reason why i mention this is because i just received a message - distributed to tens of thousands of people - which was extremely sarcastic and was deliberately designed to make me look like an incompetent fool out to cause trouble.

i cannot imagine what in seven hell's teeth the guy was _thinking_.

it was so so embarrassing and counterproductive.

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