Sigh. Why do the soc.culture and soc.religion groups seem to
bring these weirdos out from the woodwork?
> After trying many reasonable approaches to confront him, some of the
> offended people have decided to use the archive to document his abuses.
>
> The abuser in question has asked me to remove all his posts from the
> archive. He says that he is subject to blackmail by people allegedly writing
> to his employers. He also argues (correctly) that he never gave me
> permission to archive his messages.
>
> I don't see the purpose of my archive if 2000 or so postings should be
> removed from it.
I agree. Deleting messages from the archive sets a terrible
precedent. (His acknowledgement that they're incriminating also
sounds tantamount to a huge confession of guilt on his part.)
When you post to a public newsgroup, you're, well, posting to
the public, and you have to expect that your words will be
publicly visible for arbitrary lengths of time. (You, the
abuser, and his detractors should all know about Dejanews and
Alta Vista.)
A possible compromise just occurred to me, which you might
consider: Retain the headers of each of the 2000 messages, but
replace the content with a message saying "This message from xxx,
along with 2000 others, has been deleted from the archive at the
request of xxx, who was afraid that people would use this archive
to document their claim that xxx had been posting excessively."
(Of course you fill in his real name.) This has the disadvantage
that the abuser gets to duck accountability for the specific
offensive words he allegedly used, but the fact (if it is indeed
a fact) that he posted N messages on certain dates remains in
evidence. (If you don't want to rile him quite so much, you
could delete the ", who was afraid... excessively" part, and the
subtlety might even be more effective.)
I do hope, though, that you're squeaky-clean in this affair,
because maintaining an archive is at least as high-profile an
act as posting 10 offensive messages per day, so if *you* have
any detractors, it gives them lots of leverage. (Also, if the
situation ever comes to a head, your university *will* require
that you delete or relocate the archive, not because it is or
isn't acceptable to Usenet, but simply because it's not a
"legitimate" use of university resources, which if nothing else
is their way of saying that they don't want to put up with --
and devote legal resources to -- these kinds of repercussions.)
Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com
-- The Communications Decency Act within the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (U.S.) is an annoying, threatening, abusive, indecent, and obscene piece of legislation which attempts to ban annoying, threatening, abusive, indecent, or obscene communication.
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