- From: Jeffrey Mogul <mogul@pa.dec.com>
- Date: Mon, 08 Jan 96 11:21:11 PST
- To: http-caching@pa.dec.com
Remember that our goal is to achieve consensus. If we are to reach this goal in the presence of disagreements, then the messages we send to this list must be intended to change the minds of the people we disagree with, NOT to score points against them among the people who already agree with us. So statements of the form "X is clearly good" or "X is clearly bad" are useless, unless followed by the word "because" and then a clear and reasonable justification. Some of us have been better about this than others. This applies to people on both sides of whatever argument we're having today. Also, statements that implicitly accuse another party of being stupid or even ill-intentioned are hardly going to help matters. Fortunately, I haven't seen any such statements made explicitly. But remember that people may read something differently from the way you meant it, and could take insult where none was intended. Most of the people in this group have demonstrated a willingness to change their minds in response to polite and sensible arguments. Most of us are going to have to change our minds about at least a few things, or we will not reach a consensus. I don't expect everyone to agree; that's the difference between consensus and unanimity. But to the extant that we can minimize that difference, we're all better off. Thanks -Jeff
Received on Monday, 8 January 1996 19:29:09 UTC