> British Press Gagged Over MI6's #100,000 bin Laden > Wednesday, 9 October 2002, 10:24 am > Article: www.UnansweredQuestions.org > ...
> I first noticed that the Guardian article I had earlier posted on > my website had > disappeared. Already aware that Blair may well have ordered a > D-Notice to > eliminate these reports, I immediately started searching on Google > for some > more. In Britain, a D-Notice is where the government order a gag > on > a > particular breaking story. > This is why posting articles on Usenet is usually superior to putting them on a Web site in a censorious country (U.K., Germany, Saudi Arabia, U.S.A., Canada, etc.). More generally, I've been watching the migration of many discussion groups over to "Web-based forums" (or fora). Usually the migration does not improve the discussion...it just puts dancing ads and cruft all over the pages. A downside is the ephemerality of Web-based forums...they are not archived in Usenet archives, they are not archived by whomever chooses to archive mail exploder discussions. (And only a dimbulb thinks this enhances personal security, for obvious reasons.) Perhaps we need a new kind of structure, a more routinized form of Web mirrors. Something that happens more or less automagically. --Tim May
