Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!mejac!gryphon!oleg
From: oleg@gryphon.CTS.COM (Oleg Kiselev)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Cennsorship? was Re: disgusting slime
Message-ID: <7250@gryphon.CTS.COM>
Date: 24 Sep 88 10:36:53 GMT
References: 
Reply-To: oleg@gryphon.CTS.COM (Oleg Kiselev)
Organization: HASA
Lines: 46


Those who have been on the NET for any length of time have grown accustomed
to the regular calls for some form of censorship on the NET.  It seems the
time for another such call has arived.

In article  lear@NET.BIO.NET (Eliot Lear) writes:
>Oleg Kiselev argues that setting minimum standards for language and
>conduct violates some form of freedom of speech.  He then goes on to
>explain that there are tools to help a user avoid the cruft.
>What Oleg is missing is that we all agree there is cruft out there.
>The point at which an article is not cruft is hazy but we all agree
>that it is out there.  What I would like to see is a moderator who has
>a good idea of what most people consider cruft.  That way, only one
>person has to wade through the garbage, as opposed to all of us.

That is what moderated groups are for.  Introducing moderation into a number
of groups has failed -- notably, some groups had DIED because of moderation.
The usual USENET policy has been to allow a news.group to determine its
"cruft" tolerance.  No single moderator can successfully scan all the
megabytes of postings in all groups every day.  Nor can any one moderator be
capable of justly detemining what is allowable for all groups.  

There is, by the way, a number of mechainsms for fitering out the offending
material.  one could, for instance, suffer a one-time horror of  typing all
offending words into a KILL file and flushing any and all articles that
contain those words.  Personally, I would like to see words like "boobies"
and "discombabulation" purged from the NET -- they greatly offend me.  Yet
words like "fuck" etc. do not at all bother me.  Go figure...

>As to whether this inhibits someone's freedom of speech, there is such
>a thing as disturbing the peace.  Through moderation, a person who
>thinks he has an important point to make, WHO MIGHT OTHERWISE FLAME
>HIS POINT THROUGH will have an incentive to keep his posting in line
>with (at least) the minimum guidelines of the group. ( Hallelujah ;-)

USENET is a very broad set of forums, with varying purposes and linguistic
borders.  If you are poroposing moderation of ANY ONE group -- why not ask
the posters and readers of that group to VOTE on that proposal?  If you are
merely trying to crussade for your personal agenda and your personal sense of
"propriety" -- something tells me you will find precious little support.
-- 
Oleg Kiselev            "No regrets, no apologies" -- Ronald Reagan
(213)337-5230           ARPA: lcc.oleg@seas.ucla.edu, oleg@gryphon.cts.com
                        UUCP:...!ucla-cs!lcc!oleg
Copyright 1988 by Oleg Kiselev. All rights reserved. 
Quoting is allowed only if attributed.