I saw an odd post on an e-mail list

Context
I belong to an e-mail list called PUBLIB, which is directed at public librarians. Threads on subscription e-mail lists like this one usually start with a question or an invitation to offer advice, information or opinions on a particular topic, which are then responded to.

Recently, a library school student named Ron Creswell made various postings to the list (example here). His postings appeared in the form of essays on various topics which had not been prompted by previous discussion. As written, they did not appear to invite further discourse.

Commentary
After receiving three or four of Mr. Creswell's missives, many participants on PUBLIB, including myself, came to the conclusion that he had been given an assignment at library school to participate in an e-mail list. This is a standard assignment, one that is calculated to introduce students to the various modes of communication used by working librarians. It seems unlikely that Ron's instructor intended for him to dump seemingly random ruminations on the profession at large.

Once this conclusion had been drawn, list members' stated opinions of these postings basically broke down into four categories:

1) This guy is an idiot who is posting inappropriate material to the list and wasting our time. He would make a bad librarian.

2) This guy's teachers at library school are idiots for not teaching him the appropriate professional communication skills. They are turning out bad librarians.

3) We should be nice to this guy. Everybody makes mistakes.

4) This is a teachable moment where we could let this guy know where he went astray and what e-mail lists are actually used for.

In a perfect world we would all have had the #4 response. But I didn't. In fact, I remember being in distinct solidarity with the #1 folks, although I didn't post to the list.

As a teacher and a Christian, I find my response appalling. What is it in me that made me see my brother stumbling and decide that screaming and shaking my fist was the appropriate response? Sin, of course, but what specifically was going on?

Well, first off, I wasn't looking at my brother at all. I was looking at how his actions affected me (wasting my time). Then I started thinking, "somebody needs to tell this guy he's making a fool of himself in front of a bunch of people he may be working with someday." Not me, mind you, but "somebody."

This response might fall under the category "diffusion of responsibility." You can find a good explanation of this and other similar sociological phenomena here. I think that given the number of people who participate in PUBLIB who are more eloquent and venerable than me, I just didn't think it was my job to intervene.

So is this humility, appeal to authority (an insane thought if you know me personally), or just a method of avoiding difficult situations? Realistically, it's probably a combination of the three, but I know the third is of no merit and I should do my best to eliminate it from my repertoire.

Well, humility and standing aside are good things, right? Maybe, but it's not like I had nothing to contribute. I was well aware that Mr. Creswell was doing something unwise and I could have said so, maybe privately to him, maybe on the list itself with the aim of building community.

As for the appeal to authority, that actually has a lot of merit if I'm appealing to the correct authority. Ultimately, the student's well-being is not in the hands of his teachers or the list moderators. It's in God's hands. And if you listen to Jewel, you know that our hands are God's hands (listen to the song "My Hands" off the 1998 Spirit album if you don't know what I mean).

What did you see today?