Hi all,
I meant to send the following text to the list as well yesterday but was in
a hurry so only sent it to Owen. I wanted to send it to all of you so you
realised that my criticisms of online rudeness were not some kind of
response to Owen's trial idea. I think Owen thought I was attacking his
suggestion which I wasn't. Anyway here's what I wrote yesterday:
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I think there's some e-confusion going on here. My post was not a comment
on yours but a response to those that said the action taken was wrong.
It's only because my post appeared after yours that it appears to take this
context,if you read it as appearing before your trial suggestion then it
takes the
context intended.
Sorry for any confusion.
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I'll now try and clear up exactly what I meant in my original post where I
said that I find online rudeness tiresome.
It was a response to Brad's assertion that the Mo***ento ban was wrong.
Indeed today Brad writes:
>mailing lists should not be censured; especially arts lists! /:b<
The reality is that we have 2 main types of online discussion forums:
newsgroups and lists: newsgroups are totally open and unmoderated, lists are
moderated. Whilst the degree of moderation on any list is at the discretion
of those involved in its day-to-day maintenance some moderation is
necessary. It's worth noting that Fluxlist has nowhere near the degree of
moderation of certain other lists where even an off-topic post can land you
in trouble with the listowners. I have seen lists where even slight rudeness
(nothing as strong as the Mo***ento post) in a discussion has resulted in
the offender being expelled from the list.
Brad, I think Fluxlist is pretty fair about these kind of things, you may
remember your own similarly insulting behaviour towards Saul Ostrow on this
list in the past (4th August 1999 to be exact). You're still here! These
rules are just to let anyone joining the list know that we intend to respect
each other and establish an atmosphere of friendship and trust.
Owen's idea of a trial is an interesting one. I've been thinking of it since
yesterday. One initial problem I had in approaching the idea is that we had
no-one to accuse. Carol is the victim, we have plenty of eye-witnesses as
well as evidence to exhibit in the form of a time-stamped e-mail in our
archive which proves that the incident took place. However we only have an
alias for our accused, we know nothing more about him/her apart from the
list they belong to and we can't try a whole list. So it occurred to me that
perhaps if we're going to try anything we should try the concept of such
abuse, and thus explore the issues surrounding abusive behaviour in online
forums.
So, Owen, what structures do you propose?
cheers,
Sol.
