Skinner, EarlG, Elad,
Greetings. It's another scorcher. July. Whatchagonnado.
Down to beeswax:
The Education Forum, once my DU Stop Numero Uno, is suffering. In fact, it's past "suffering"; it's dead.
It's not hard to see why: a number of prodigious contributors can no longer be found. Hannah Bell, Dinger --- they come immediately to mind. There are others.
My question/proposal: would it not be worth considering the idea of offering an amnesty to long-standing, $$ -supporting, prolifically-contributing DUers who may have been deemed ..... perhaps accurately, perhaps not ( don't know; I wasn't there.)... to have transgressed DU posting rules at some point?
Seems to me, two things are inarguable here:
1. If they (HB, Dinger) transgressed, such transgressions were *rare*. Look at the post-counts.
2. The DU community as a whole suffers from their absence. HB, esp., was a *monumental* source of research and analysis on all aspects of education. Her total absence from the site hurts the community much more acutely than would an occasional lapse in decorum in the heat of political argument. I can NOT be alone in thinking this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9266634I'll add a "third thing", if I may. It seems likely that whatever point was intended by the banning , whatever message, the point has been made, the message delivered and received.
Therefore: to what avail, this permanent "non-personhood"?
For the record: i write this totally on my own initiative and have not communicated w. any of the aforementioned DUers since they disappeared from this site.
Give it some thought.
Hey... I'll be in DC next weekend for the SOS education/teachers/schools March. Maybe we'll cross paths.
Thanks for hearing me out.