apologies, and a restart

[David Galiel <web@galiel.com>]

Seems I misinterpreted a first comment after the last flamefest, 
Brandon, as being more of the same. By the time my rant posted, you had 
offered a slew of additional comments that made clear that you were not 
personalizing the discussion as our previous flamer had.
Apologies for fanning unnecessarily.

Not that it is an excuse, but I'm sure I'm not the only one on this list 
that wishes there were a more respectful culture of discourse here (in 
fact, repeated private email exchanges with half-a-dozen different 
list-members over the years tells me I am not the only one). In my 
opinion, the reason this list died is not that we don't have anything 
interesting to talk about, it is that there was only one type of 
conversation that went on here, and it is not one that many of us value.

You are correct that it is up to those who wish to discuss broader 
topics to bring them up. However, it is also true that, for those of us 
who have been on this list for years, previous attempt to broaden the 
discussion beyond "generated" story as in man- vs machine, to "mediated" 
story, as in using technology to facilitate drama among living people, 
has been strongly resisted and even shouted down (despite the fact that 
the one facet of this arena that is actually working and engaging large 
numbers of people all over the place today, in practice not just theory, 
is people-to-people virtual environments, and the thing that is hooking 
people is not the stupid NPC vendors and foes, but rather the other 
actual humans that make those spaces come, literally, alive).

Guess that made me oversensitive in this case. I care about this field, 
I have made it my life's work, and I have had many productive 
discussions and developed many productive relationships one-on-one 
off-list; but I have yet to participate in a many-to-many discussion in 
this industry that doesn't degrade into intolerant know-it-alls telling 
everyone else what is and what isn't, and what may or may not be 
discussed. I am most certainly NOT trying to tell you what to talk about 
or how much to talk about it. I just wish every single creative 
sentiment expressed on this list were not met with an engineering mindset.

iDrama, after all, is not just "i", it is also "Drama". For those who 
think they can just engineer a good story, or that good storytelling is 
just an algorithm, you are missing 5/6's of the title.