Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!pyrdc!pyrnj!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!utastro!werner From: werner@utastro.UUCP (Werner Uhrig) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: disgusting slime (was Re: A SERIOUS DILEMMA FOR THE NET) Message-ID: <3144@utastro.UUCP> Date: 20 Sep 88 20:46:48 GMT References: <265@sulaco.UUCP> <5572@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <267@sulaco.UUCP> Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX Lines: 56 In article <267@sulaco.UUCP>, allen@sulaco.UUCP (Allen Gwinn) writes: > In <5572@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>, loci@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (loci!clb) writes: > > In article <265@sulaco.UUCP>, allen@sulaco.UUCP (Allen Gwinn) writes: [ disgusting slime-throwing contest deleted ] I consider it a personal offense to be made a witness to a slime-throwing contest, and posting this kind of crap in news.admin falls into that category. if you guys don't like each other, please be assured that news-admin doesn't want to know about it - so why don't you tell each other in private e-mail? and think about it, do you really care that little about the impression you make on readers of news.admin?! > The net has a perfectly good mechanism for dealing with postings > that cause aggravation; the reader merely doesn't read whatever > they find offensive. If it's too extreme, unsubscribe. I've seen this argument over and over again, and cannot help but refutiate: > the reader merely doesn't read whatever they find offensive. how do you determine that an article is offensive without reading it? whereas one can unsubscribe to a group with an "offensive" purpose or trend (some consider alt.flames in that category) I do not really accept the concept that some news-groups are by definition offensive, and no complaints should be made about the contents of any articles posted there. in the jokes groups it has become a custom to use rot13 to encrypt what might be considered offensive and it has worked quite well, it seems. in other groups, some people have the good sense of indicating in the Subject, Keywords, or Summary, that some people might be offended; sometimes that works, but most of the time it has me question the good sense of the poster to post the article anyway... > If it's too extreme, unsubscribe. that's like giving up the playground to the bullies... I will gladly abandon any group that gets voted into existence for the purpose to harbor offensive messages; other groups I will refuse to unsubcribe to in response to such a consideration. alt.flames? well, I have better things to do than to correct some peoples' lack of education and social graces ... I'm glad the group exists, though, to me, "flame" does not imply to mean that "offensive" is acceptable ... -- --------------------> PREFERED-RETURN-ADDRESS-FOLLOWS <--------------------- (ARPA) werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (Internet: 128.83.144.1) (INTERNET) werner%rascal.ics.utexas.edu@cs.utexas.edu (UUCP) ..!utastro!werner or ..!uunet!rascal.ics.utexas.edu!werner