| Subject: Re: Good for Jimbo, but what language will *he* speak? |
Author:
Begbie
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Date Posted: 15:32:50 02/17/03 Mon
Author Host/IP: NoHost/209.17.158.14
In reply to:
Roger Buxton
's message, "Re: Good for Jimbo, but what language will *he* speak?" on 14:44:12 02/17/03 Mon
I don't know if Jim Prentice is a Star Trek fan (although that may be a good question to put to the candidates) and I agree calling someone "Jimbo" is not as disrespectful as it could be. But one aspect of this race that we have to learn how to deal with is the use of the internet to conduct our internal party discussions.
There are great opportunities and risks for us in this. For the first time we are able to have unmediated exchanges of opinion among oridnary members, and we will be able to respond almost immediately to our various candidate's positions. This is a tremendous opportunity for the democratic involvement of our membership in the process.
The risk arises from the same factor that makes the internet such an opportunity - its immediacy and availability to everyone. The discussions we have here, and on other sites, are not private, nor are they as, shall I say, "conservative" as they would be in any other forum. Anyone with experience in e-mail, let alone chat rooms, knows that language that would never find its way into a letter to an editor, or be expressed openly at a meeting of PC members, for example, is routinely fired off into cyberspace. The risk of flame wars is immense, as we head into the cut and thrust of delegate selection, as is the risk that any disrespect directed at candidates or their supporters can become public, and a sign, not of healthy debate within the party, but of dissension and fractiousness.
The PC party has, for some, come to define itself as much by our internal battles as by our positions on issues. I hope we can use the leadership race to get rid of this impression. That is why I urge anyone contributing to this site to be as vigorous as they want to be in debating the issues, but treat everyone, from candidates to fellow posters, with the respect we would like to prove to those outside the party is a normal part of how we treat each other.
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