Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84 chuqui version 1.7 9/23/84; site nsc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!nsc!chuqui
From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Zonker T. Chuqui)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Welcome to Usenet 1984
Message-ID: <1708@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Oct-84 01:25:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: nsc.1708
Posted: Fri Oct 26 01:25:00 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Oct-84 03:33:03 EDT
References: <1622@nsc.UUCP> <229@bragvax.UUCP>
Organization: The Warlocks Cave, Castrovalva
Lines: 77

> >I brought John Williams to the attention of the powers that be at Dec, and
> >they have assured me that he will act in a gentlemanly and proper manner or
> 
> Chuq, this is immoral and unfair!  You seem to be confusing Usenet with
> real life... you are taking advantage of the natural paranoia of a
> bureaucracy to mess around with something more important than
> net.singles or even net.flame -- John Williams' job.  Net problems
> should be solved on the net or left unsolved.

I've gotten a fair amount of mail on this one-- probably not unjustified as
I didn't write the thing as well as I should have. I was still rather
ticked off by the whole situation and I should have cooled off a bit more.

Here is what transpired with Mr. Williams:

    1) Mr. Williams started posting articles to net.singles. Some of 
    these articles upset or offended readers of the articles. None of them
    were particularly constructive. 

    2) A number of people wrote to Mr. Williams asking him to please clean
    up his act, myself included. The responses I've seen, mine included
    were exceptionally vile and abusive, and not at all cooperative.

    3) I contacted two people at Dec: decwrl!johnsson and decvax!aps.
    Decwrl!larson wrote me back and said he had told Mr. Williams to act
    appropriately. He has not been told not to post, just not to post
    garbage. Neither of the people I talked to have anything to do with
    Mr. William's job that I know about, just the network connections.

I disagree with you completely that these problems should be solved on the
net or not at all, for a number of reasons:

    1) When you run into a person who is acting in an immature nature, and
    does not wish to deal with the rest of the net on a mature level, you
    need to find someone who will for them. I call this the 'kindergarden
    teacher syndrome'. I see no reason why an entire audience of readers
    have to put up with one idiot who gets their jollies by making their
    lives miserable.

    This has been standard procedure for me for a long time. If someone
    does something wrong on the net, I talk to them about it. If they
    aren't willing to correct their actions and I think it is neccessary I
    will contact the usenet coordinator about the situation and let them
    know that someone on their site is creating problems. I've had to go to
    this length three or four times this year. 

    2) Like it or not, folks, every disclaimer in the world will not keep
    you from generating impressions of your company to the other people on
    the net. One person like Mr. Williams can do enough damage to make sure
    that everyone thinks that Dec is a rotten group of people, when only a
    small percentage of the people at Dec are rotten (*grin* a VERY small
    percent, Dec friends...). The posters at a site are what the net views
    as representative of that site, and I would use what I know of the
    people on the net at a site in deciding whether I want to work there.

    3) Contrary to some people's opinions, Usenet is not a right, it is a
    priviledge. With priviledge comes responsibility. I am more than
    willing to work with people on a personal level when possible because I
    would want to have others work with me that way. When that person
    refuses to accept the responsibility to be fair to the rest of the
    users, all bets are off. I'm not willing to see the net ruined by a
    single bad egg. In Mr. Williams case, I attempted to discuss the
    situation with him and got nowhere, so I talked to someone who could be
    a bit more persuasive. If that is immoral or unfair, so is having a
    single person creating problems for the rest of the net because of his
    unwillingness to work WITH the rest of the net; and so is that one
    person creating negative feelings towards his employer on that net. If
    you still think I was wrong, I'm sorry. I don't. I hope I don't cause
    work related problems to Mr. Williams because he doesn't deserve them,
    but he should have thought of that before he opened himself up to it. 

    chuq
-- 
From the Department of Bistromatics:                   Chuq Von Rospach
{cbosgd,decwrl,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui  nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA

  I'd know those eyes from a million years away....