Alberto Monteiro wrote:
>
> Or do you *really* want a brin-l list with unmoderated
> free speech?
>
Well, the thing is, Brin himself wanted an unmoderated list.
I think the idea is self-moderation -- you censor your own posts before
sending them off. This worked fine for a couple of years. The
etiquette guidelines were set up in response to a crisis where someone's
posting behavior went way beyond anything I've seen since. (Among other
things, someone thought it would be fun to spam the list with
obscenities one Saturday morning, and had made a habit of insulting
various listmembers leading up to that.) If someone does the list
equivalent of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, then something ought
to be done. Beyond that, reminders from other people ought to be enough
to bring the wayward back into line. So why didn't anyone call anybody
on the "nazi" issue when those posts appeared? Were we all expecting Jo
Anne to come in with her Wand of Dinging? Or did each of us know that
we were guilty of something and didn't want to be scolded in retaliation
and have a flame war ensue? Or didn't we care enough about the tone of
the list to speak up? Or were we just sick of the thread and leaving
those posts unread, until there was no one outside the debate to gently
point out to the offenders that their posts were offensive?
Julia
