<HTML>If this message board contains only Craig baiting Merlin and Merlin responding in frustration, then I fear all the other mail artists will go somewhere else and shun this board as an unproductive environment. There is nothing for Craig to gain by turning the board into a ghost town so I wonder about his motives.
One way to deal with an assault/insult by Craig is to delete his posts for a few days. See if other posters return. Craig has proven that he has a small but intense value to create short bursts of furror. However, his posts never follow through a topic or contribute an ongoing conversational strategy. He always has to have the last word, or the last picture. His sense of closure to communication is the subtext of his insults to mail art.
For mail artists, who by their nature wish to embrace cultural, political, and personal differences in the network it is especially frustrating to have a power hungry person such as Craig openly insulting and subverting all interactions. In his statements that mail art is not interactive he tries to shut down our interactions.
In the classic tradition of Ray Johnson I say Craig should be dropped. In this age a balance between hacking in and firewalling out dropping Craig may be possible. If it is impossible to drop Craig then I suspect that mail artists will loose this board that Merlin has built for us. I will be sad. My schoolgirl giggle will cease.
Craig, I am sorry that you have formed some kind of hatred for the mail art movement and wish to destroy it by making it into an image of your own vision. The mail art network will survive your attack and flourish in ignorance of it except for the few mail artists who visited here as witnesses. I've asked you before to take your creativity, build your own network and be the founder of your own movement. The mail art movement is not ripe for takeover. You will gain nothing. We will loose this electronic connection, however, we will still have a world of mail art to explore.
Go scan yourself.
Good luck.</HTML>
