Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!elroy!gryphon!oleg
From: oleg@gryphon.CTS.COM (Oleg Kiselev)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: A SERIOUS DILEMMA FOR THE NET
Keywords: Something MUST be done about Portal
Message-ID: <7171@gryphon.CTS.COM>
Date: 21 Sep 88 22:54:34 GMT
References: <7086@gryphon.CTS.COM> <7090@gryphon.CTS.COM> <848@vsi.UUCP>
Reply-To: oleg@gryphon.CTS.COM (Oleg Kiselev)
Organization: HASA
Lines: 34

In article <848@vsi.UUCP> sullivan@vsi.UUCP (Michael T Sullivan) writes:
>Why, oh why did these people post form letters.  Like we aren't going to
>notice that they're all the same letter.  Who is worse, the people using
>handles at PORTAL or these bozos insulting our intelligence ("Really, we,
>er I mean I, did this all on my own!").  Talk about net.rude.

Yes, you may have noticed a single message.  But it would have done as little
good as all previous single postings and e-mail messages trying to attract
attention of PORTAL administration and the USENET community to the serious
problems created by PORTAL et al.

Only by doing something exteremely in bad taste (and I agree with you -- a
mass posting of nearly identical message all accross the NET is extremely
rude) could we have possibly hoped to get a large enough reaction to both our
message and to the problem it adressed.  We have, I believe, succeeded -- in
some way.

The PORTAL administration has failed to realize what was being asked of them.
NOT censorship, NOT abolishing all flames, NOT kicking posters off -- what we
called for was user education and user responcibility.

Before PORTAL appeared, the most common violations of Nettiquette were
freshmen and other new users at educational institution sites.  The simple
reminder that they will be very likely to meet the people they offend now
when they start looking for a job in a few years -- probably in a capacity of
interviewers and managers -- had been most sobering and effective.  

This trick will not work with PORTAL...
-- 
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.