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Nice discourse on all of this. None of this is truly harmful: all the emails only proves people have opinions.
When it's something I don't care to engage in I hit "DELETE" it works.
I have a view pane and I can simply pick, yes or no to read.
Nice to see some items, not interested in others.
Say good night Gracie!

I happen to be the person that is under consideration for banning on Law-Lib.
I would really like to know the opinions of folks here on the wisdom or otherwise of a List-Owner permitting a vile troll to post on a Discussion List under total, avowed and unashamed anonymity. It is a vile anonymous troll that has caused all the current trouble on the Law-Lib List

I get tired of all the e-mails from the listserv that are in response to an original e-mail that I deemed boring & deleted.

I was so bored with the listservs I was on, that I unsubscribed from all of them!

I now have a less cluttered inbox!

After numerous people weighed in on whether to boot or not boot Mr. Huttner the list administrator emailed this message:

Thank you to everyone who has offered input to the list administration issues and suffered through this extensive dialogue. I did not keep a tally of the responses, nor do I intend to make a decision based on votes. In part, the importance of the exercise is to note the interruption these postings cause to the general purpose of the list and to some 3500 subscribers. I am not deleting anyone for now, but in the future I will simply delete ALL the parties involved without asking. If everyone can just pause before hitting the send button, and not use the list to openly denigrate and disavow others, we have no problem. These incidents have been emotionally and personally charged, whether you believe they are provoked or not, they are unprofessional and unproductive to the general subscriber list. If you have a problem with someone's opinion and cannot discuss it professionally, then please take it OFFLIST. We will not use the list as a platform for name-calling.

Yes, we! can all press the delete button, but why should we have to. We should all expect more from this list and its subscribers. We can debate, discuss, differ, and offer opinions without charging them with provocation and name-calling. We risk losing a substantial number of valuable contributing subscribers in exchange for tolerating this behavior. Thanks very much. Judy

Hey, Huttner -

I wonder what the vote break-down would be if you hadn't already terrorized the list for over a decade.

Remember the results of my survey back in October 2007? 80% of respondents found you annoying. 20% were afraid to reply to your posts, publicly or privately.

Let's think about that for a moment: 20% of 3500 members = 700 professional law librarians who are leery of communicating directly with you. Even the few who were brave enough to speak out against you during the recent debate were publicly attacked by you. And what about that librarian you threatened? No answer to her accusation, no protestations of innocence?

I wonder how many talented law librarians have signed off law-lib because they're tired of your rantings? Even one would be too many, yet I can think of dozens. How wrong is that?

Are you anonymous? Technically, no. But would anyone in America recognize you in the street? No. If you think you're so beloved, I challenge you to attend a AALL conference, and wear a name tag. I would be *delighted* to tell you to your face what a cowardly slimeball you are.

Your old pal,
Mickey Mouse

You really are a BLOODY LIAR with figures, Mr Anonymous Mickey Mouse. You even go so far in your posting above as to take percentages based on a figure of 3500, knowing FULL WELL that nothing REMOTELY like 3500 Law-Lib members (i.e.the full membership of Law-Lib) responded to your ridiculous survey. If my memory serves me correctly, the percentage of the total membership that bothered to respond to your "survey" was a miniscule 7%. But you are far too cowardly a slimeball to tell the truth about "minor" details such as that, aren't you ? Pathetic. Truly pathetic.

Ron Huttner
Melbourne
Victoria
Australia
rshutt@netspace.net.au
Phone: (61) 3 9509 381
NOT an anonymous cowardly slimeball at all

Remember when you asked us about threads that should be nuked?

Ta-friggin-da.

I have just found the actual "survey" results as posted by "Mickey Mouse" on the Law-Lib List on 11 October 2007.
Out of a total List membership of 3500, a mere 301 bothered to respond. That is 8.6%. End of story. 91.4% of the List membership simply could not be bothered with it at all.

Of course one doesn't have to ask everyone. But any statistician will assure you that when you DO choose to ask everyone and get a "non-response" rate of over 90%, NO valid conclusions can be drawn from the tiny percentage of responses actually received. Do some Googling or other research on the concept of a "statistically valid sample".

Ron Huttner
Melbourne
Victoria
Australia
rshutt@netspace.net.au
Phone: (61) 3 9509 381
NOT an anonymous cowardly slimeball at all

There were in fact 3500 "in" the survey. Not 301. The entire membership of 3500 was invited to respond. Only 301 of those invited chose to respond. Please tell me where you get your conclusion of a "95% confidence rate" from - i.e. the sample size calculator that you used and its methodology.

That does not answer my question at all. What is the formula that gives one the figure of 346 ? Where does it come from ?
How is it derived ? To simply say "It's called math" tells me nothing useful at all

Ron Huttner
Melbourne
Victoria
Australia
rshutt@netspace.net.au
Phone: (61) 3 9509 381
NOT an anonymous cowardly slimeball at all

Of course it's me. Who else ? And you are 100% correct. I should NOT have been hanging out on Law-Lib for so many years after I retired in mid-2003. But unlike many, I actually ENJOY helping people. I did it because (a) I liked it, (b) I was jolly good at it and (c) I wanted to keep my mind and my legal skills alert even after retirement. For MANY years I had an excellent website for lawyers known as "VidElex - See The Law". It used to get many thousands of hits every single day from all over the world. It was totally free. I never made one solitary cent out of it. I had NO "backer" and paid out of my own pocket to run it. Eventually, after a heart attack in 2000, I had no choice but to take it down because it was COSTING me a lot of money to maintain it. WHY did I do it for so long ? Because I was able to and got enormous satisfaction knowing just how many legal researchers found it extremely useful. But I now agree. Both Law-Lib and this List are places where some very nasty characters indeed hang out. And the crap on both Lists is, indeed now awful and intolerable. It's very sad. So I am playing bowls far more these days, and practising my trumpet with determination every single day. What's more, both my bowls and my trumpet playing have improved out of sight.

Ron Huttner LL.B (Hons)
(Retired) Barrister, Solicitor, Law Lecturer and Legal Researcher
Melbourne
Victoria
Australia