Admin: "Don't make me get my belt..."

[Ben Cohen]

Hey, folks,

There seems to have been a bit of rancor over the past couple days or so. The
timing, quite honestly, couldn't have been worse as it landed right at the
same time as the Jewish New Year, so I've been fairly busy (in a
non-electronic fashion) as well as, now, being horribly behind work-wise.
[Yes, I work. :-)]

A few things:

1) For anyone who cares, I'm the owner of the list and the only moderator. My
preference, in general, is to *not* need to flex my moderator muscles. I have
only done so when there have been egregious personality issues. (You know who
you are / have been.)

2) To respond to an off-line comment on-line (because the individual involved
won't be named, so I'm betraying no confidences) - I will *NOT* be changing
the list into a fully-moderated one. Honestly, I would shut it down before I
went that route. We're all adults here, and I expect everyone to behave that
way.

3) Regarding the recent flap and kerfluffle... There are special tags set up,
but no one is required to use them, nor to constrain themselves solely to the
ones that are pre-defined. We've *always* ranged far afield in the discussions
that evolve here and, oftentimes, those tangents are useful / interesting. I
will, at least to a *certain* extent, support Mike M's request that folks use
(more) appropriate tags, but, as I said above, will not insist upon it nor
require it.

4) While the name of the list is "BOC-L" and has the explicit purpose of
discussing BOC and HW, I don't really have a problem with discussing other
bands / music / whatevers that wind up being even tangentially-related. After
all, merely by way of example - why wouldn't we talk about, say, Michael
Moorcock in relation to HW? He writes books, but that doesn't detract from the
interest and input we can gain from such a discussion. [Note, this was not
intended to spark a discussion about Michael Moorcock - it was just intended
to be illustrative.]

So... back to the topic(s) at hand. Play nice and please respect each other.
Think of this as a big cocktail party where everyone sort of overhears what
everyone else is saying (funky acoustics). Also, don't be afraid to change the
subject of a thread / reply chain if you think that the topic has shifted.

Your humble owner / moderator / ringmaster / cat-herder,
Ben