Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!hal!ncoast!allbery From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: The Dynamics of Debate on USENET Message-ID: <1989Oct1.135803.11181@NCoast.ORG> Date: 1 Oct 89 13:58:03 GMT References: <35033@apple.Apple.COM> <46115@bbn.COM> <35037@apple.Apple.COM> <1989Sep27.175601.5363@ladc.bull.com> <822@swbatl.UUCP> <265@dbase.UUCP> Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) Followup-To: news.admin Organization: North Coast Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, OH Lines: 46 As quoted from <265@dbase.UUCP> by dveditz@dbase.UUCP (Dan Veditz): +--------------- | In article <822@swbatl.UUCP> uusgta@swbatl.UUCP (Tom Adams ISO 5-4237) adds: | >If what bothers you is [the] style,...spelling, grammar, immaturity, | >pomposity [etc.] ...of the poster,... *use mail first*. | | Everyone here in news.admin seems to agree with these guidelines of socially | acceptable USENET behavior, but how do you 1) make all net-posters aware | of these guidelines, and 2) make them follow these guidelines. +--------------- You can't, aside from exhorting people to read Spaf's "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions About USENET" posting in news.announce.newusers. And we've all seen how well *that* works. Historically, the Usenet has had a simple but (usually) effective way to deal with violations of its rules: individuals would remind the offending poster of the rules, and in extreme cases notify the offender's sysadmin of the problem. One of the problems with this self-policing is that there is a small but vocal group of people who insist that attempts to enforce the "rules" of Usenet will destroy the Usenet, and try to intimidate others into silence; they have a point, but they are over-reacting a bit. Another problem is that it seems to be becoming somewhat less effective as time passes. This may reflect a change in society in general, or simply an indication that it doesn't work too well when the Usenet reaches a certain "critical mass". Not that there's any alternative that wouldn't radically change the nature of the Usenet. I suspect we're stuck with it. +--------------- | These are rules of civilized behaviour, while our society is becoming | less civilized. We would be better for it if these ethics were adopted +--------------- Opinion withheld, except to note that this is a worthy topic for one of the "soc" groups, IMHO. (In other words, I'm not certain we should get into that in *this* group.) ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc allbery@NCoast.ORG uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu bsa@telotech.uucp, 161-7070 BALLBERY (MCI), ALLBERY (Delphi), B.ALLBERY (GEnie) Is that enough addresses for you? no? then: allbery@uunet.UU.NET (c.s.misc)