ATEG Members, I think most of us have learned to not "feed the troll," but what do you do when the poster's rude behavior and insistence on saturating the list with his opinion (an unscholarly one at that, likely to confuse many who come to this list for guidance) reach the limit of most participants' patience?
 
What's the protocol in the Internet community for these kinds of situations? Is blocking the offending sender's email address the best option, and will blocking work since the addresses are routed through the listserv's email server?
 
I've asked this before to no avail -- does this list have a moderator? Does ATEG's listserv have any regulations at all or any effort at moderation. I'm not asking about censorship rules per se, but Web-based forums surely must have some kind of content and topic moderation as well as user decorum and behavior guidelines, right?
 
At this point I consider Brad's messages graffiti to the otherwise highly constructive environment of ATEG. Even when other posters' personal arguments sometimes lead me to cringe or shake my head, the content is still constructive and driven by scholarly notions of inquiry and debate. I suppose blocking the messages is my best option, but if ATEG doesn't have some kind of management of the listserv, I would certainly suggest it as a worthy element of exploration!
 
John Alexander

On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 2:09 PM, Brad Johnston <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
This is for everyone's eyes except Herb. He's in the penalty box, pending his release of his definition.
 

A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, c.1932. 

               by Otto Jespersen (1860 - 1943) 

 

Part IV, Syntax, Third Volume, pp. 81-84.

 

6.4 The pluperfect is used both in main sentences and in subordinate clauses; the conjunctions chiefly used are: when, after, before, till. A few examples of this tense from Stevenson's T may here suffice:

 

~ examples

 

After when, the simple preterit can sometimes be used, though the two events mentioned follow one after the other, and the preterit is thus equivalent to a pluperfect.

 

~ examples

 

In the following quotation, the use of the pluperfect in the when-clause, where the simple preterit would have been normal, seems to have been induced by the pluperfect in the main sentence.

 

When they had been little they had watched each other's plates with hostile eyes.

 

(Shades of Huddleston's, "When Arthur had been a boy he had used to play football". One might wonder who copied from whom. Get the knuckle-rapper.)

 

This is Exhibit #104 to my assertion that there is at least one past perfect error on any grammar website or in any grammar textbook you can name. Challenges are welcome, encouraged, and appreciated.

 

.brad.11apr09.



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