I accidentally in your base

I'm a member of a mailing list consisting of about thirty or so geeks. The core of the list is a group of friends from Essex University's Electronical Engineering BEng about 15 years ago, and the rest of us are people who were invited in by those core members, or in some cases third-wave recommendations.

Recently one of the core members proposed a new member who is (a) American, and (b) a teenager - 16 I think. Apparently he knows him through WoW and the kid is ubersmart and fairly geeky, so should fit in fairly well on that front. There are a few of us who also feel that the perspective of someone younger would be interesting, as we're almost all in our thirties now and our brains are probably calcifying nicely.

However, there is of course the concern of inviting a teenager to participate in random discussions with a closed and almost-entirely male group of adults. We discussed this for a few days, and decided that we should email his parents and get their opinion. The member proposing him got the kid on Skype, spoke to his mum* and got her email address, then sent her some info about the list and what kind of stuff we talk about.... and asked if she'd mind her son being a member.

Here's her response:

>    I am comfortable with [name] being a member of your mailing
> list, and you probably already know that he is chock full of
> perspective.  We can overlook rough language etc. but no coups
> d'etat please.

I like her already... I just hope that her son has picked up half of her good sense and humour. Also, I hope he's very proud to be described with the phrase "chock full of perspective" :)


* Yeah, it could have been someone else, but we believe it was his mum. We can only make reasonable efforts here really.