The meaning of life, and this mailing list

["William H. Martin" <whm2m@cms.mail.virginia.edu>]

I'm going to make a rare, intentional departure from the 
established purpose of this list and post in English something 
that does not directly concern the Klingon language, though it 
does perhaps involve its potential for survival.

I honestly believe that this list has an additional purpose to 
the stated goals. As I see it, the list has three real goals:

1. To use the Klingon language.

2. To discuss the Klingon language.

3. To have fun and be generally supportive of these other people 
who also choose to study and use the Klingon language. This is, 
at its essence, promoting the language and insuring its survival.

I'm sending THIS message primarily to try to compensate for my 
own apparent failure to promote that third purpose. I recently 
left the list because I found myself at the center of enough 
petty arguments and general negativity that I hoped that if I 
left, the list would find its own way toward the third goal.

When I returned, I was pleased to see a lot of people posting in 
Klingon and there was a general positive feel to the list. Now, 
I'm seeing it once again descend into largely English posts 
dominated by rude, petty arguments over acceptable use of the 
vocabulary. We are failing to respect one another. We are 
failing to have fun. We are failing to support one another as we 
foolishly compete for dominance of a fictitious language spoken 
by a fictitious culture. It is the very embodiment of "An eye 
for an eye, making the whole world blind".

We are a community without leadership, embroiled in 
short-sighted competition for leader of the moment without much 
insight as to where we would all be better off were we to be led 
there. The direction seems less important than who gets to judge 
whom.

I'm not claiming innocence here. I'm just asking for a great 
truce. I'm asking for us to change our direction, to focus on 
the positive accomplishments we have done and can yet do.

Maybe this is impossible for us. Maybe we are but children and 
we need a father to stop every episode of disrespect that we 
show one another, since we are not apparently able to stop 
ourselves.

Can we PLEASE go back to being a list where the more advanced 
speakers spend most of their time speaking in Klingon or 
providing positive guidance to beginners. Can we please stop 
bickering in a way that any fool could see will never resolve 
anything?

"You can use this word this way."

"No, you can't!"

"Can, too!"

"Can't!"

"Can, too!"

"Can't!"

"Mommy! Tell him that I can use this word this way!"

Everybody, go to the corner and sit and think about your own 
participation and how nice it would be if we could get along 
better together.

charghwI'