Having recently gotten hammered for having the "naughty words" filter
on one of my lists without telling my users, I was wondering if I could
get some opinions from other list-owners about it.
A couple of my users have taken strong offense at the possibility that
their messages could have been censored ("naughty" words replaced with
asterisks) if they had used profanity *without their being told up-front*
that such language was unacceptable.
It's my belief that profanity has no place on a general, open discussion
list, regardless of the age of all participants. I've never felt it
necessary to warn my users that being impolite (IMO) may get their
messages censored.
Now here's the catch. Nobody's ever actually said any offensive words and
had them caught by the filter. The word that got caught by the filter
recently and brought all of this out into the public was the URL of
another mailing list provider. Several months ago we added the names of
several free mailing list providers to the "naughty word" list because
several list owners (the particular list in question included) were having
trouble with obnoxious users setting up alternate mailing lists and asking
people to abandon the Phoenyx list and come to theirs. (Not a general
advertisement for a new list, but specifically saying, "We don't like this
list-owner, come to our list where we'll be kinder, gentler dictators."
I had one guy that suggested setting up a new list at least once a week
for awhile.)
This hacked a few people off. Some people don't understand why we're
paranoid about "competition." Honestly, I can't really tell you why I
am... I just find it incredibly offensive when someone uses my own list to
invite people to abandon it for one of their own. I don't have anything
against people who offer services similar to the Phoenyx... I don't think
anybody really offers the things we do anyway. I just have something
against people deliberatly using my list to attempt to destroy my list.
Unfortunately, there are so many weird issues wrapped up in this one
little fight. I asked a guy to quit posting ads... it was the third he'd
done for this other service which was unrelated to the list. He claims
they aren't ads because he's just a satisfied consumer and not an
employee, but in any case, the "check out this cool service"
public-service announcements were off topic for the list.
One of our friends said some insulting (and bizarre... I have to admit to
being reduced to tears) things to this person. This friend happens to be
the only person unrelated to the running of the Phoenyx that has a
phoenyx.net address, so they assumed he was staff. A new user (five days
subscribed) got offended and set up a list on * (that probably just
got censored) and invited everyone to abandon this list for hers, which
would obviously be much better because nobody would ever fight on her
list. And her message got censored. Not just *'d out, but the silly
filter at the time was swapping the names of list providers... producing
valid-looking URL's that were invalid links. (I didn't know it was doing
that... I have to blame my wife for that little silliness, which was the
result of a joke in another list having problems with list-rebels.)
She unsubscribed, but emailed the guy who I asked to quit posting ads with
her outrage and he reposted her mail to the list. I came clean about the
filter (which I had really forgotten about for quite awhile, and had never
considered to be that big a deal) and about my annoyances and fears of
people trying to "hijack" my list. But now I'm some great, evil bad guy
because I was trying to censor competitor's advertisements (finding out
that I censor mention of free mailing list providers turned my request for
not posting ads into censoring the ad because it was a service vaguely
related to something the Phoenyx offers.) Here I thought I was being
lenient because I had let this guy get away with posting his sort-of ads
before and instead I'm running a Nazi-state (his words) because I censor
the names of competition. (I don't deliberately censor the names of
competing services... my intent is to censor people who are deliberately
trying to disrupt my list by inviting people to abandon it.)
Hey, it's my list... is it really evil of me to disallow the posting of
messages that invite my users to abandon my list? Without telling my
users ahead of time?
Is it evil of me to censor language not acceptable on TV without telling
my users ahead of time? Isn't it simply common sense that you shouldn't
say these things on a public forum?
--
Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net)
Don't do dat, it hurts my wittle bwain.
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners
