Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!gatech!ncsuvx!ece-csc!ncrcae!ncr-sd!serene!rfarris
From: rfarris@serene.CTS.COM (Rick Farris)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: A SERIOUS DILEMMA FOR THE NET
Summary: You have to apply pressure where it does the most good.
Message-ID: <233@serene.CTS.COM>
Date: 23 Sep 88 18:25:52 GMT
References: <7086@gryphon.CTS.COM> <9337@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: rfarris@serene.cts.com (Rick Farris)
Distribution: na
Organization: Serenity BBS,  Del Mar, Ca.
Lines: 31

In article <9337@cup.portal.com> Phillip_M_Dampier@cup.portal.com writes:

>I would like to see the blatant stereotyping of all Portal users as teenagers
>who are irresponsible stopped.  You people are allowing a few bad apples to
>influence your views in general on Portal users.

I don't suppose it occured to you that the "you people" you're speaking of
are adults, and know exactly what they're doing?

There's this problem, see; on a system with (reputedly) 15,000 users, a
small minority of them are causing trouble for people on the net.  Now everyone
knows (contrary to your opinion above) that it's only a small minority, but
the problem is; How do you get the attention of someone who can do something
about it?

The people who are the targets of the irresponsibility are not paying 
customers of Portal.  The people that are paying customers (you) don't seem 
to care about the actions of their fellow portalets.  Indeed, they probably
don't even feel a kinship for them.

So how do you apply pressure to the powers that be at Portal?  One way is
to make things so darn hard on every other Portal user, that *they* turn to
the Portal management and say things like "Why don't you do something about
the Portal users who are abusing Usenet?".  Now we've got paying customers
complaining, and *that* works.

Simple, neh?
                      _______________________________
Rick Farris          |     rfarris@serene.cts.com    |   Voice  (619) 259-6793
POB M                |    ...!uunet!serene!rfarris   |   BBS          259-7757
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