On Sat, 10 Aug 1996, Al Gilman wrote:
> From: "Zoli Fekete, keeper of hungarian-faq" <fekete@chi3.bc.edu>
Note that it was PV, not me actually ;-(.
> But in the meanwhile he can intimidate people into silence. To be more
> exact, he can FAQ people into silence. And use news.answers to FAQ
> more people into silence.
>
> That is where the news.answers moderators may have a right or duty to
> step in. If the antisocial behavior includes mailbombing victims with
> resources collected and rendered handy by the news.answers project,
> or intimidation includes invoking the name or aura of authority of the
> news.answers literature, then
Hold it right there! Clearly, mailbombing must be fought on its own
wrong. That however does not directly have to do with the FAQ (as Peter
himself separated the issue once cooled down a bit). On the other hand,
starting to act as if news.answers had an "aura of authority" would be a
VeryBadThing, with wider and worse ramifications than the SCR crankery
itself.
Incidentally, if they make good on the threat of cancelling then the
NANAM crowd should be sicked on them with extreme prejudice; if they
don't, strike up yet another one on the list of their documented lies.
> - the news.answers project has suffered damage from this
> abuse of its good name
It's not really a project in the sense you consider it (ie. something
having to do with the moderators' own work), and IMHO should not become
one either.
> - the news.answers project may be an accessory to the abuse
> of the mailbombee, if it did not properly safeguard the
> bombs and image of authority it has unwittingly manufactured
> from being used in this way
It's not an accessory, it could not safeguard even if it tried, and
those mailbombers and their instigators have prefectly been capable of
doing it without news.answers in any event...
> "No man is an island." We have trouble in our society today
> because we have vested in corporations certain rights inherited
> from the class Donne refers to in this line, without ensuring
> adequate safeguards that the corporations will behave in a
> prosocial way. It is a bug in our legal system that people get
> off from the consequential damages that follow on their acts when
> combined with the acts of others. Ultimately the moderators
> group has manufactured something new in the corpus of moderated
> stuff, and has to take some interest in how it is abused.
Well, no. They provided an open forum for presenting information. As far
as no stuff that's harmful per se (PV's employers home phone numbers may
count; Iastkosky's silly spiel arguably dangerous to the real FAQ-keeper
and the groups does not) is posted they are not obligated to intervene,
and IMHO better not. Making such pitiful idiots out to be martyrs of the
Cabal[TINC] is precisely what they want.
Usenet in general, and news.answers in particular, is not a cure for the
ills of society. If you want to improve it, do it on your own accord (see
my last header lines for something you can put together yourself) but do
not call for overloading the moderators' function!
- --
Zoli fekete@bc.edu, keeper of <http://www.hix.com/hungarian-faq/>
*SELLERS BEWARE: I will never buy anything from companies associated
*with inappropriate online advertising (unsolicited commercial email,
*excessive multiposting etc), and discourage others from doing so too!
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