I'm taking advantage of an apparant loophole in the FAQ that permits
commentary on certain issues arising interpretation and questions.
Consider this a clarifying post.

At 01:28 PM 5/4/99 -0500, The Eternal Lost Lurker wrote:

Folks, kindly ignore a post Kaoru Shimitsu made just now which was aimed at
me. He apparently failed to realize that the message he was replying to was
not posted to the FFML and was in fact a private message.

This may in fact be true.

Which, as I recall, we seem to have had a rather lengthy on-list debate
about very recently, yes?

No, we had a five-post discussion that fizzled out and concluded nothing.
The dissenting opinion concluded that the original complaint came the
closest to violating list policy.  The February 1998 edition of the FAQ
does not exclude debate over questions on proper list behavior nor does
it provide any instructions as to where such questions may be directed
an answer.  By the example of the FAQ co-maintainers, the apparant forum
for addressing these issues is on the list itself.

This'd be a very good time for people to learn that public replies to
private messages are unwarranted.

Of course, this is "netiquette," which IMHO is a capricious, arbitrary,
and frequently inconsistent unwritten and thereby unofficial code of
conduct which is completely dependent on individual perspectives.
An unwritten rule is no rule at all, and the lack of 
a quantitative consensus makes it even more conspicuously shallow.  Of 
course, a specific stipulation in the FAQ *with* noted approval of the 
list moderators would have the effect of making your supposed "rule" an
actual law of the FFML.

Tybalt's recent ruling on the issue of private and public email holds until
such time he would change it.  I suggest that this ruling be reviewed and
included in the FAQ.

-The Reverend Prez

*  *  *

+-----------------+-<The Badass Reverend of Funk Prez>---+
|    Presley H.   | Political Science / Computer Science |
|    Cannady II   | and Electrical Engineering Undergrad |
|<revprez@mit.edu>| at the Mass. Institute of Technology |
+-----------------+-<Anime Manga Development Group>------+
+     Author of Liars and Dreamers, a Robotech fanfic    +
+-------<http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/1731/index.html>-+
| MIDN 4/c A-2-2 SQD, MIT-Harvard-Tufts NROTC Battalion  |
|_|"The art of war is of vital importance to the state"|_|