<VV> to all the newer folks (NO CORVAIR)

[Ramon Rodriguez III]

Greetings Vairfolk,

     For any of you who have been irritated or upset by all the bantering
that has been going on here I wanted to give you the perspective of a
semi-newbie who has been on this list on and off for around 6 years.

     This list is LOADED with people who really know what they are doing,
helpful people who will point you in the right direction when you are
stuck.  I think I can confidently state that this list is the absolute #1
best resource in the Corvair hobby and it is well worth putting up with a
little unpleasantness on occasion!  Essentially what I've observed is that
VV is usually a pretty constant stream of people looking for help and others
helping them out... but every once in a while a certain post will (often
totally unpredictably) trigger a week or two of agitated posts and flame
wars.  I myself (having much internet communication experience) can
definitely say it is hard to resist chiming in when someone says something
that gets your blood pressure up!  Also there is no "delete post" button
here, so even if a person realizes they said something they shouldn't have
they can't fix it once they've hit send.

      Another key point is that text comments can VERY easily be
misconstrued because there is no tone of voice, inflection, or body language
to give you extra information on how the speaker really meant what they
said.  There is one person on this list who I found to be rather abrasive
and nasty over several years of posts, when I finally met him last year I
found out that I had totally misjudged him for the reasons I just mentioned
and we got along very well in person =).


     I'd also like to re-iterate what some others have stated;  This list is
comprised of a lot of people who have known one another for many years.
Many have strong friendships with others on this list, and some have had a
lot of time to develop a dislike for certain others.  All of this is bound
to come out from time to time in the form of the type of posts we've
recently seen.  I also know that there are a lot of people in the Corvair
world who have a similar personality type to myself and all of my good
friendships involve smack-talk going back and forth between myself and the
best of my friends!  Any outside observer very well might think that my best
friend and I hate one another if they were to hear many of our
conversations.

Ray "Grymm" Rodriguez
Lake Ariel, PA