[Reader-list] [OT] some facts

[Frederic Madre]

At 08:51 08/09/2001 +1000, geert lovink wrote:
>in early 1996 the Syndicate mailinglist was founded and for a good five
>years functioned as an important trading ground for ideas and information
>about European new media culture (and increasingly also beyond 'Europe').
>Its main focus was to establish an exchange between former West and former
>East Europe. The list boomed and almost crashed during the Kosovo crisis in
>1999. This arts and culture got intensely tense between those who favored
>the NATO bombing and intervention and those who criticized it. 

meanwhile such discussions were terrifyingly clamped down on the nettime list which became dominated by the pro bombing posters some of them being ardent supporters of the dangerous UCK/KLA
nettime became a vanity mailing list for its arrogant moderators
"In my opinion it's a good lesson what can happen to list."
and that is where our common history ends.

>Syndicate
>carried a lot of first hand reports from the region at time. Never having
>recovered from this controversy something slowly went wrong with the list.
>Like reader the list was open and unmoderated, unprotected. 

unlike nettime it was (and is) lively and friendly

>Dialogue faded
>away. Announcements took over. Silence set in. Then a few net.artists
>started to use the list as their forum and posted immense ammounts of
>self-promoting ascii art posting, full of hatred. Syndicate got deserted and
>in a matter of weeks was destroyed by a hand full of people. You can see it
>for yourself: http://www.v2.nl/mail/v2east/.

mr lovink this is false
here are the facts

someone complained about nn (as usual)
there was some discussion (as usual)
nothing happened, too many people said they liked her and that the problem was not too much nn but not enough of the others talking (as usual)
then (I was offline in NL) the admins decided to unsub her but all they sent was a majordomo system message that said that she was unsubbed
so, when I came back I asked 'did she unsub herself or was she removed ?'
there was some discussion (as usual)
finally they admitted to having removed her and then more people complained about this decision that was not discussed on the list and not explained
after a while the admins said something like 'ok, there are more people that want her back, so, we'll put her back and we're going away' (that a was stunning decision)
suddenly there were no admins anymore 
new people said they wanted to be admin
I supported them. there were tons of private mail between a handful of people
and

syndicate is on a new server and all is well
there are 400 subscribers and you are all welcome to join!
http://anart.no/sympa/info/syndicate

>  In my opinion it's a good lesson what can happen to list.

yes, according to the unbiased facts,
it truly is!

>  Now a new initiative has been launched by
>the same people called Spectre. It's an interesting read what they learned
>from this bitter case of so-called net.art destroying a community:

come on, most of the people involved were not net artists
and if they were: so what ?!

sorry i believe this is off topic but i value the syndicate list as much as this one (reader) mostly as an outsider that wishes to learn more than impose his own culture even if i have some internet mileage too.


>SPECTRE is an open, unmoderated mailing list for media art and culture in
>Deep Europe.

farewell,
f.