[Sigia-l] In defence of Ziya ... WAS Re[2]: Let's be helpful...

[Sean Lawrence]

Good LORD!!  I've been too busy to even read lately, let alone post, but 
what is all this nonsense about?  Ziya is a out-spoken, taciturn, yet 
well-informed member of this community and hardly a broken window.  The 
thin-skin being represented on this list is, in my estimation, far more 
deleterious to this list than ANYTHING Ziya has posted in the 4 years 
I've been here. 

I enjoy Ziya because he is an iconoclast, devils advocate, and will call 
BS when he sees it.   He might get a little overzealous at times but I 
think expecting folks to read the archives is completely reasonable.  I 
think I might have been directed there once or twice myself.  They are 
there for a reason. 

Ziya provides a much needed service for us as well.  Being members of a 
community who have to justify the very existence of our profession, we 
need to be challenged, confronted, and forced to rethink our 
assumptions.  If you can't handle that, then maybe this isn't the 
correct field for you and you don't belong on this list.  People who 
take his comments so seriously remind me of folks who *really* think 
that typing in upp-case is yelling. 

I for one would find SIGIA-L far less interesting and colorful without 
Ziya.  Email is much like radio and TV, you can change the channel (or 
in this case filter the content).  This group certainly shouldn't be 
advocating ANY kind of censorship, as it is counterproductive to our 
collective goals.

-Sean