But this war ended with several people leaving the list, on both sides of the fence. Surprisingly, Cal chose this time to also leave the HLML, citing some vague reasons. Dan and I were rather puzzled, to say the least, as we hadn't heard a peep from Cal and suddenly she was leaving without telling us. A couple of innocent inquiries lead to a rather vitriolic attack against Dan, which quickly spread to the list. Cal was mad that she had limited list powers, that she was still a "hidden" admin, and that Dan didn't seem to trust her (evidence being the guidelines that Dan and I worked out for list admin conduct).

Dan was flabbergasted, as he hadn't seen it coming at all. Cal had never indicated that she was unhappy. Worst of all, she had a totally wrong picture of what had happened. She kept asserting how it was some plot of Dan's to favor his friends and punish his enemies. Decisions which Dan and I had made without any input from her (although we copied our correspondence to her as a matter of course) were all some fiendish machination of Dan's.

Now, I can't blame what Dan did. Several people had joined Cal's side, a smaller number were defending Dan. I urged him to not respond to Cal publicly, but he felt he had to. I can see that Dan's response was all true, and rather mild compared to the inflammatory postings. But it did no good, it just seemed to stoke the fires more. Too late we tried to ignore it, hoping that it would die down. But in the end several more people left, a friendship was ruined, and Dan lost a lot of confidence in his decision-making abilities.

It's a shame that Cal never bothered to communicate with us privately. It's a shame that we didn't handle the situation better. Looking back I don't think anyone had a clear picture of what was really going on; how some assumptions turned a relatively vibrant list into a shadow of its former self, one that still hasn't been recovered.

Dan, the poor guy, kept wondering why he hadn't seen it coming. When, at his suggestion, we tried to replace Cal with Jo, and that also failed, although thankfully that was all done in private, when that happened he started to fade out. Other interests grabbed his attention and eventually he took a half-year off, leaving the list to me and Griller, who we coerced into joining as an emergency admin.

There are times when I really wonder about the motivations of some people. Some people do things that look rather spiteful, or callous, or inflammatory. I've always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt, to assume that nobody is intentionally mean. It's easy to write something meant in jest and then have it interpreted wrongly as some sort of vile attack. Most people don't seem to have that attitude, and are quite willing to jump to a conclusion and assume the worst, because that is what they would do in the same situation.

There are a couple of things that I've gotten out of this experience. Try to be clear, be willing to apologize if the other person might have been hurt, be willing to forgive people for their mistakes. All good things to know and do, although it's a sad testament that it would something like this to make me think about it.

The other piece of wisdom that I garnered from this incident, is that nobody has the whole story, least of all the participants. It's amazing what Cal thought Dan was doing, it's amazing what people who weren't even involved ventured as possible theories to what the "real" story was. Dan and I certainly didn't know what the heck was going on.

It's funny that a few days later people tried to summarize what had happened and at least had gotten our part wrong. At that point we weren't talking, so I guess the truth will never really be known. Even this little recounting is probably strewn with little errors. Just something to keep in mind when someone wants to tell you what really happened between X and Y or why Z did this.