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From: das@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group
Subject: Re: Removing net.flame
Message-ID: <6179@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 28-Jun-85 02:51:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.6179
Posted: Fri Jun 28 02:51:19 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Jun-85 03:06:48 EDT
References: <3892@alice.UUCP> <1818@amdcad.UUCP>
Reply-To: das@ucla-cs.UUCP (David Smallberg)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 68
Xref: watmath net.news:3528 net.news.group:3200
Summary: 

In article <1818@amdcad.UUCP> phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) writes:
>
>Why don't we just take UCLA off the net? Seems that's where all the abusers
							     ^^^
>are. Was it by coincidence that I just read a UCLA student was convicted of
>"breaking into a Dept of Defense computer network"?

[Second question first:  Ronald Mark Austin was a physics major who never took
 anything more than an intro CS course; he had no legitimate access to any UCLA
 machine on USENET or the ARPAnet.  What does he have to do with anything?]

Say what?  *ALL* of the net abusers are at UCLA? Anyway, my recollection is
that Scott and Alex together posted no more than half a dozen messages that
many people might find abusive AND that were not responses "in kind" to earlier
messages.  [For that you want to lose Peter Reiher's movie reviews?!]

I think you've skipped a step in the "How to deal with Rogues" procedure:
1. Send a well-reasoned, non-inflammatory message to the rogue, explaining why
   his behavior is not appropriate.
2. If that fails, try again; stronger language is OK here, as well as a preview
   of later steps.
3. If that fails, drop a line to the rogue's site administrator.  Be fair:
   don't quote flames out of context.  I'd suggest to the SA that the rogue be
   told that if he makes one more annoying posting, he'll lose {his ability to
   post/his account/his job/whatever is appropriate for his situation}.  After
   all, the rogue just may have misunderstood the rules of the game, and a note
   from an "outsider" doesn't carry much weight compared to one's own SA.
4. If that fails, tell the SA that his/her site may be taken off the net if the
   situation is not cleared up.
5. If that fails, do it.

Please show how step 3 has failed.  You seem to be reacting to three-week-old
postings and all the followups to them.  Since step 3 happened, I haven't
noticed Alex playing any followup-line games, and Scott has rotated and
double-rotated all his postings (and at least one person has found them funny
enough to post a C program to read Scott's postings).

[Broadening my reply to issues others have brought up:]
About nuking net.flame:  It currently serves as an escape valve; if a
discussion in another group gets too heated, the flamer is told to (if s/he
hasn't already done so) take it to net.flame.  [It would be nice if "net.flame"
being included in the Newsgroups line caused all other groups on that line to
be ignored, or possibly cause "See net.flame for the text of this message"
to be posted to them.  That special casing would sharpen for ignorant users
the distinction between flaming and non-flaming forums.  (net.general should
be special cased, too, to solve some of its problems)]

If net.flame is nuked, a massive re-education project would have to be
undertaken to inform everyone that flaming is NEVER acceptable net behavior.
I think it would fail, since different people draw the line at different
points (when does a political argument with a little bit of name-calling turn
into a flame?).

I don't think libel is the big deal people seem to be making it out to be
(although I'd hate to be the test case, true).  It ain't libel if it's true,
and it ain't libel if there's not a chance that the reader will take it to be
true.  If I say that you eat fecal matter, for example, no one is going to
believe that, and I could claim that I was speaking metaphorically, anyway.  A
newspaper (or the National Inquirer) may well be believed, since many people
expect what's published therein to be basically true; net.flame, however, is
recognized as a forum for the exchange of insults (even though that is a
childish (if they're uncreative and unfunny) misuse of the group), so there's
no real expectation of truth.  (An exception might be if someone told a story
about someone that purported to be true.)

I've violated my self-imposed limit on length of postings, so I'll stop here.

-- David Smallberg, das@{ucla-cs.ARPA,cs.ucla.edu}, {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!das