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From: faustus@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.stargate,net.followup
Subject: Re: STARGATE (READ THIS!)
Message-ID: <65@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jan-85 21:02:02 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.65
Posted: Thu Jan 17 21:02:02 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 01:42:09 EST
References: <504@vortex.UUCP>
Organization: UC Berkeley CAD Group, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 39
Xref: watmath net.news:3014 net.news.stargate:54 net.followup:4362

I will be the first to agree with you that the way Frank Adrian expressed
his opinion of the Stargate project was inexcusable. The people who have
been working on this project certainly deserve a lot more consideration
and respect than this.  But before this message was posted, I hadn't heard
a word about Stargate, and I suspect that most of the people on the net
hadn't. I wish that somebody had posted something to net.general or 
net.announce to alert people to what was going on in net.news.stargate
before Mr. Adrian got around to it. This is an important point in the
development of Usenet, and I think people should have been made aware of 
it before now.

As I see it, the reason that people are so worried is that there will be
some sort of moderation on almost all newsgroups. But what sort of 
moderation are we going to have? If the only problem is to protect Usenet
from possible legal problems, I suspect that only a very small fraction
of articles will be susceptible to censoring. Dirty jokes, communist
propaganda, and so forth isn't the sort of thing that should be censored.
In fact, aside from quotes of copywrighted materials, I haven't seen a
single article (except perhaps for Frank Adrian's, ironically enough)
that is appropriate for censoring.

But if the purpose of censoring is to make sure that news is of higher
quality than it has been so far, all I can say is that if people start
to throw out articles because they feel that the things discussed have
been discussed before, or because they personally don't like what is
being said, or even that it has been posted to the wrong groups, I will
stop reading netnews. The ONLY purpose of censorship should be to make
sure that Usenet will not be held legally responsible for what is
posted, and I would very much like to hear the people in charge of the
Stargate project adopt this position.

Aside from this one point, I am very much in favor of Stargate, because
it offers Usenet a chance to go from being a second-class network held
together by bubblegum and string to a position of respectability. UUCP
just won't cut it any more.  The only thing to worry about is that in
the conversion to Stargate the nature of Usenet will be changed too
much, in the wrong ways.

	Wayne