Zoss Communications, Inc.

Additional Thoughts of the Simple Rules

Over the years we've had a lot of discussion, both on the list and back-channel, about my rules for the list. Generally they are pretty obvious and designed to keep things civil and easy for everyone.

The one area that keeps coming up is rule number three, which I quote here:

3. EXERCISE CARE REGARDING MESSAGE SUBJECTS:

Please do not use the list as an enforcement tool to collect debts, "warn" people about someone you've had trouble with, "SPREAD THE WORD" about your problems or disputes, attack or publicly criticize a brand, dealer, or an individual, etc. Use private e-mail if you want to warn people. A public message like that creates a situation where someone might target the list even though we had nothing to do with the offending one-sided message. Help protect the list by sending those messages, if you must, directly to individuals or place them somewhere else - not here.

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Quoting from some recent back-channel discussions I thought I might share some additional thoughts so people who have been thinking about this subject might see my viewpoint. As always, I'd be happy to discuss this with anyone through personal messages to me. My address is certainly not hard to find!

1. My rules have to do with the one-sided nature of these "warning" or "get-even" posts, not whether they are accurate.

2. Over the years, and I mean years, we've had occasional flare-ups of warning messages on the list.One example: Where someone complains so-and-so took my money and now he doesn't answer e-mails and I've been defrauded. Then we find out so-and-so had a heart attack, no one could get into his computer, the check sat in the mailbox until his return from the hospital, etc. Weeks later everyone is sorry, we have a round of apologies, etc. That's horrible. It has happened.

3. When someone I do not know posts a message on my list accusing someone else I do not know of some horrible act then I'm caught in the middle. The message poster has co-opted me into being on his or her side by using, without my advance knowledge, the list as a vehicle for the (accurate or not) accusation.

So what?

Here's one problem: let's say we are discussing someone who is indeed a bad person. They are also possibly unreasonable and I'm one of the ones they might target.

4. Here's another problem: I know lots of people who seem reasonable but when you get right down to it, they're very different from me. Their standards are different. What I think is a fair description of an old pen is, to them, a fraudulent description because the bad plating on the back of the clip was not mentioned. Someone calls the seller a crook but maybe, in reality, it isn't quite so crystal clear. It is not within our ability to research the details. I do not feel the list is the proper forum to explore those differences, to air those disputes, etc.

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5. It might be nice to have some forum for alerting people to trouble sellers and buyers. There is no argument about that, but public messages on my list are not the way to do this.

6. Do I just ignore all problems, all disputes? Well, no. I must distinguish between sellers anywhere in the world (external sellers not a part of our list community), and sellers on the list who are subscribers.

Sorry, but I cannot provide a forum for people to warn about some seller somewhere. There are other places to do that, other remedies.

But if you are asking if my list has a duty to buyer subscribers about other subscriber sellers on the list, that is closer to home. I do what I can. Rarely will you have a hint of that in the public message traffic - it is always behind the scenes and with no guarantees.

As I see my role, I try to keep the list from being a place where bad people take advantage of good people. Perhaps once or twice a year I am asked (always back- channel) to intercede in a dispute between two list subscribers where a transaction has gone bad. Sometimes it's a long-delayed repair, or a lost shipment, or a promise not kept, or a refusal to refund all of someone's payment because of work done, shipping, etc. (all of these are real examples).

Usually it works out. I recall only one example of having to remove a person from the subscription list because his response to a situation made me nervous about his continued selling on the list.

That's as far as I'm willing to go.

CONCLUSION

Maybe I'm just too nervous. While this is a free service to subscribers, a nice community of mostly really sensitive and friendly and trusting people, it is also a mirror of the world. Heaven knows there are a lot of people out there who have different standards of civility and ethics and sometimes we get zinged. I cannot protect my subscribers from all of them.

Simply put, my list cannot be used as some one-sided online vigilante black list without exposing me to liabilities I prefer to avoid. Those who push the envelope regarding civility, and who regularly start disputes by posting "baiting" comments about individuals will find they are no longer welcome in the community.

Also, my few rules have helped maintain an atmosphere of civility that has been pretty good for years and years. I do not want to change that.

This is far too long a message, and I'm sorry for that, but I hope to show that the rules are not just some random ideas I cooked up without thinking them out.

Thanks for your interest,

Tom Zoss
Moderator of the Zoss Pens List

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Thomas Zoss
Zoss Communications, Inc.
3431 S. Weeping Willow Way, Bloomington, Indiana 47403 USA
Telephone 812-332-2334, E-mail to Tom Zoss