At 06:50 AM 11/24/96 -0800, Brian Edmonds wrote:
>
>As others have said, I have nothing so formal for my lists. I generally
>run under the "you say what you like, I unsub who I like" approach. I
>have only recently had to start enforcing this on a few of the chronic
>offenders, despite repeated warnings.
When I first took over sci.econ.research on Usenet, I got a bit of flak at
the beginning for the pepper and ginger I added to the discussion. The
newsgroup exists as a moderated medium because sci.econ is simply a
cat-fight where any fool with an idea or a complaint will post their
economic revolution du jour. Thus the moderated alternative is somewhat
dry. Thus it seemed to me that apart from restricting the irrelevant it
could also benefit from a little toasting of the stoo-pid, or the merely
careless. Naturally I was available to supply this on demand. I could also
supply the demand.
There was a flurry of "moderators are supposed to be neutral," which while
admirable does not add up to moderators being mute and supine. Worried, I
spent some days looking over the net for opinion, precedent, and even wisdom
on the subject, and I found it. A part of it was this group, and I still
belong. Equally important was the support I got from a number of the old
time net gods and from people I respect in economics. Their opinion/wisdom
was almost unanimous: "It's your group." Sometimes this was expressed in
Anglo-Saxon terms, but the consensus was unequivocal: it's your group,
newsgroup, letter, server, whatever. You have _no_ obligation beyond those
of personal behaviour -- doing what you said you'd do, and so forth. If the
users and lusers think otherwise, they're quite welcome to start up their
own group, letter, serv, site, or whatever.
I find this all rather cheering. It's nice that there is still a frontier.
Well said, Brian Edmonds.
Cheers,
-dlj.
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