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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!bellcore!decvax!yale!pbear!peterb
From: peterb@pbear.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Is anyone else offended.....
Message-ID: <6700010@pbear.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 28-Jun-85 16:13:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: pbear.6700010
Posted: Fri Jun 28 16:13:00 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 1-Jul-85 06:46:25 EDT
References: <266@timeinc.UUCP>
Lines: 58
Nf-ID: #R:timeinc:-26600:pbear:6700010:000:2855
Nf-From: pbear!peterb    Jun 28 16:13:00 1985




	I have been watching this debate and the "villians" for a time now,
and I feel I should add my 2 cents worth.

	As the network grows, the distrubution of users varies, but it
always include those persons who make themselves highly visible by insulting
other users.

	Lately users over at ucla have been drawing a lot of attention to
themselves by the way they insult other people. Notifying the SA after the
fact does not correct the damage created by those persons.  Also the SA can
not be 100% dependable to police the site. Also some SAs may be hesitant to
convict and sentence personnel that vagrently violate the guildlines of
USENET.

	What I suggest is that some person at the site read every article
and reply that originates at the site and refuse transmission of any
article/response that can discolor the site. This would also remove the need
of all the disclaimers floating around. Also this one person would be
responsible for releasing any articles that contain questionable content.
Also this person would activlely converse with other "court officers" the
set up guildlines for policing the net.

	If an "officer" finds an article that is questionable, the article
would be diverted back to the originator's mailbox with added comments that
state this and suggestions on how to correct the problem.

	This officer would not wade throught the mail, just the articles
that get posted to news/notes, thereby cutting down on his/her load.

	If an article gets out of a site, it would contain in it the
"rubberstamp" of the officer conatining loginid and date/time stamping. So
if at a later date it is deemed questionable, there is a path back to a
person who released it. This will remove the "videogame" approach to the
net. Sure people play games with it, but with a level of buffering in
between, all the obviously bad articles can be "trapped" and vectored back
for editing/correcting.

	I know somebody out there is going to jump up and down and yell
"Censorship! Censorship! Don't violate my rights!" If people don't post
questionable material, they would never observe the interaction of a censor.
On the other hand, the article should never have been posted anyway.

	I know that I have not addressed all of the issues here, but I have
tried to present a possible alternative to dropping groups entirely. I
hertily agree with an SA's wish to drop a non-useful group such as
net.flame, and to pull the plug on other groups. It's their bill to pay to
transmit it, so they can decide whether or not to transmit it.

	Usenet is an anarchy, and if everybody plays clean ball, no one will
know this. Else somebody is going to get upset when their article is pulled
or their group is dropped. All I can say is tough... don't say that I didn't
say its coming nor agree with it.

	Peter Barada
	{ihnp4!inmet|{harvard|cca}!ima}!pbear!peterb