Summing up and moving on (I hope)

I want to start by apologizing to any and all who I offended with my explanation of what it was about Dossy's post that I found offensive.  Dale later suggested that it would have been more productive to say why the post offended *me* rather than why I thought it would be offensive to Glen.  As usual in these matters, Dale was right.  By that time, unfortunately, the combination of the problem I'd created and the yahoo / network traffic problem were at a state that I decided it would be better to wait until the latter was fixed before I tried to correct the former.  Based on the results I got when I replied this morning to one of Dossy's latter posts from yesterday, it appears that the email problem has been fixed.  So now I'll try to resolve the one I created.

There were 50+ posts in my inbox this morning (empty last night at 10PM CST) and I've read them all.  I'm going to pull in one of the thoughts that was expressed in what follows.  Unless asked, I don't intend to go back through them and reply to them individually.  So, to back up to Dale's recommendation...

I was offended by Dossy's post to Glen because I believe that the communication style employed in that post will cause business-side participants here to leave or, at best, to continue to lurk.  I also believe that it will cause others that I hope to have participate, whose participation I believe may help accelerate the adoption of XP practices in the mainstream, to choose not to participate.  It offends me when someone on the list works in what I perceive to be opposition to the list's stated objectives.  Dossy's later post to Glen was in a much more appropriate style.

I will try below to address the root of my concern.  I do not intend to offend and I will be happy to explain further if requested, assuming the request is in the form of a question requesting additional information, as opposed to an accusation.

Ron helped me quite a bit when he introduced the word "passionate."  It helped because it gave me a larger framework in which to think about the posts I've been reading.  Many of the comments in this discussion and in others have come across to me as angry.  Anger is, for me, a difficult emotion to understand and to respond to in an effective fashion.  Putting that in the larger context of "passionate" helps me understand it and, hopefully, to be able to respond more effectively in the context of the communication style I believe we need to have here to accomplish the stated objectives of the XC list.

Level of Passion, either positive or negative, is generally a contra-indicator for decision makers in the business environments I work in and am interested in discussing here.  The decisions these folks make impact the lives of hundreds, more often thousands of people; employees, customers, stakeholders of all sorts.  They do not trust emotion as a sound basis for decision making.  Passionate presentations are discounted as unreliable.  Decisions made on the basis of passion are considered unreliable.  People who make decisions on that basis are considered unreliable.  The folks I hoped to engage when I created this list are unlikely to spend the time to participate in a discussion here if it appears that passion, rather than reason, is the basis for discussion.

Passion has it's place.  It does not have a place in the discussions I hope to see conducted here.  I apologize in advance to those who are offended by my position on this topic.  I'll understand completely if you choose not to participate based on that constraint.

Thank you,
Bill