Carl and All,
I'm with Carl on this one. Anyone who, in effect, came up to me and told me
I was useless would deserve to get a piece of my mind. At the very least.
This idiot's gotten off lightly with just an asterisk or two.
I don't use the censor filter on my list (I *think* I don't :-) because I'd
rather give people the choice - colourful, varied english, or just
'colourful' english as their character prefers. You can guess which one I,
as a GM, prefer. That said, no one swears and I'm grateful. We shouldn't
cater to the lowest common denominator.
Advertising's off-topic and commercial and that's bad, full stop. Anyone
who tries that on with me will get a polite email and find themselves on the
moderation list for a bit. You're the good guy Carl. Your list isn't a
public service, it's a favour you're doing for friends you haven't met yet.
If this guy's wrecking that, he's way, way out of line.
Steve
----- Original Message -----
From: Carl D Cravens
To:
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 3:23 AM
Subject: LO: Censorship
> 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
-- --------------------------------------------------------------
Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners
