From: "anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : From: "anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> ...For example there is a wide range of intelligence here. Now somebody, we are not saying who, must be the stupidest person on FFL, though in all fairness, they may have all moved over to The Peak, that phallic symbol pointing up into the sky. Once we discover the stupidest person here, one of us, or several of us need to attack that person's 'person', their ego, by implying directly and forcefully they are in fact, not just in surmise, the stupidest person on FFL. Then, Doug has to determine if the stupidest person here person has been sufficiently maligned to warrant action against the violator for having pointed out a simple fact. Interesting. You certainly make a good case for how difficult Doug's job will be. Just riffing on this theoretical scenario, Anartaxius, do you think it would be easier for Doug to make such a Solomon-like decision if the person who had been named as the stupidest person on FFL had made eight posts just in the two days since Doug was made moderator, *each* of them violating the Yahoo Guidelines in some way? Of course I do not know. Suppose we called someone a criminal. Now that might violate the guidelines. But suppose that person was arrested the next day for a felony? Would the person making the now correct call be reinstated? Doug in posting definitions of various kinds of slurs included the word 'irreverence' but that word does not appear in the guidelines. I think that kicking a person off FFL for irreverence would be a violation of free speech, for from a religious person's view, an atheist is irreverent but has just as much right under U.S. law as people who have more difficulty grasping logic and fact. The religious unaffiliated are now 28.8% of the U.S. population, more than mainline Protestant, Catholic, and non-Christian believers. The only group larger than the 'nones' as they are called, is the Evangelical Christians. In the Netherlands, the religiously unaffiliated are 42.1% of the population and it is increasing. People are not just posting from the United States here. The 'nones' are 27.8% of the United Kingdom (as long as it remains united anyway). All good points. As for me, I don't know how Doug is going to work out in his new position as the moderator he's always wanted to be. His intent may be good, but I don't think I'm alone in questioning his ability to act fairly. I think the first indication of whether he can or not will be revealed in how he reacts -- or even IF he reacts -- to my two posts about his practice of spamming what *he* considers "The Yahoo Groups Guidelines" every day. As I've suggested, the first 307 words of that message (which has been reposted seemingly dozens of times now) strike me as OK, because they mainly ARE the actual Yahoo Guidelines, along with a few definitions of terms. The 1,300+ words that follow, however, are just one long rant by Doug, and one that strikes me as incredibly biased in support of one small group of people here and their viewpoint, while being equally incredibly bigoted *against* another group and *their* viewpoint. I honestly don't see how anyone who wishes to even *pretend* to be fair can keep posting it. In a very real sense, it's like someone who has been recently elected as a large corporation's Chief Equality Officer to insure that all races are treated equally releasing a daily memo whose first 300 words are the actual rules that prohibit discrimination, followed by a 1,300+ word diatribe against niggers.
