From: regard@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com (Adrienne Regard)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,alt.abortion.inequity
Subject: Re: Let's Play StipUlations..
Date: 20 Oct 1992 08:39:36 -0700
Organization: Hewlett Packard, San Diego Division
NNTP-Posting-Host: hpsdde.sdd.hp.com

In article <nyikos.719283669@milo.math.scarolina.edu> nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
>>>In article <1bfgu1INNpie@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com> regard@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com (Adrienne Regard) writes:
>>>After sex, even if the man has never wanted to become a parent
>>>and used a condom and spermicide, he has no right to make decisions
>>>about his "personal or family privacy."  He cannot abort the child;

Peter, get your attributions right.  I did not say the above.  Don did.

I know you have a crush on me, and can hardly post, even in your conver-
sations with others, without some reference to me, but please, make an
effort to get it *right* when you pretend to be actually quoting.

(not that it would surprise any of us that you show no interest, period,
in ever getting things right on the net......)


Adrienne Regard

---

Here's where the sparks began to fly. Adrienne made a *HUGE* assumption
right off the bat -- she assumed that Peter's comments in response to
"He cannot abort the child" were addressed to her PERSONALLY. I think 
that was an unwarranted assumption. True, Peter was responding to Adrienne's
article, but that can be explained by the fact that, in addition to
responding to Don's "He cannot abort the child" phrase, Peter also wished
to address Adrienne's "a pregnancy resides within her body" phrase, and
had no inclination to post two separate articles, where one would suffice.
There's no independent reason, as far as I can see, to believe that Peter
had intended a PERSONAL response to Adrienne wrt "He cannot abort the
chid" -- the response to that phrase was totally generic, and contained no 
references to Adrienne whatsoever. If he had said "You're wrong, Adrienne,
he can if he's strong enough ..." then all bets would have been off. But he
didn't. On that particular point, he responded generally. Most of the text
wasn't even his, it was from Suzanne Rini, and what text he did add was 
mostly just to identify the source.

Adrienne also made some questionable attribution-editing decisions in her 
article. She DELETED the <Bw42t5.8L5@cs.psu.edu> attribution which was the 
handiest documentation of her own (true) claim that the words in question 
were spoken by Don Beaver, yet she RETAINED the troublesome 
<1bfgu1INNpie@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com> attribution which had already tripped Peter 
up once already. Did she really think these edits were going to clarify the 
situation? Way back when I was in the financial printing business, I used to 
juggle a lot as a freelancer between the typesetting and a proofreading 
departments, and we used to have a rule that no proofreader works on the same 
text that they inputted as a typesetter. The rationale was that if the 
typesetter had screwed up something ONCE, that the chances were high that they 
would screw it up a SECOND time, even if they're wearing their proofreader 
"hat". It was a good rule, borne no doubt from years of bitter experiences in 
a industry where accuracy can make or break a firm. Adrienne, on the other 
hand, having already seen Peter screw this attribution up ONCE, decided to 
send it back to him alongside the other aforementioned confusing attribution-
edit, to see if he'd screw it up AGAIN. And sure enough, he did. Did she get 
what she wanted?

Finally, as a general observation, why did Adrienne even bother posting the
article at all, except to enflame Peter? Was she so impressed with Peter's
"refutation" of the "He cannot abort the child" phrase, that she felt
embarrassed to be associated with the original claim? Somehow I doubt it. 
I think that Adrienne, as I, considered the Rini anecdote to be virtually 
irrelevant to any GENERAL claim, since forced-abortion-by-unwilling-father is 
so exceedingly rare. And even if she _was_ so goshdarned concerned about the 
-content- of Peter's article, why did she not respond to the charge that Peter 
had made that she was employing "Newspeak"? She let that one slip right by 
her, whilst bitching and whining about secondary issues like attributions. 
Given this, I think it's fair to characterize Adrienne's article as pure 
"flamebait". The remainder of this analysis should be read with that in mind.

Since Peter's response to the previous article is rather long and involved, 
I'm now going to lapse into traditional paragraph-by-paragraph-type responses,
addressing Peter personally. For those who wish to just press 'n' at this 
juncture, my gist is that, even though faced with some highly questionable 
behavior from Adrienne, Peter a) failed to recognize and admit his original 
error in failing to delete the spurious attribution, b) overreacted generally, 
and c) made some irresponsible statements which amounted, IMO, to an escalation.

In article <nyikos.719889454@milo.math.scarolina.edu>, nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
>In <1c197pINN2ve@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com> regard@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com (Adrienne Regard) writes:
>
>>In article <nyikos.719283669@milo.math.scarolina.edu> nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos) writes:
>>>>>In article <1bfgu1INNpie@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com> regard@hpsdde.sdd.hp.com (Adrienne Regard) writes:
>>>>>After sex, even if the man has never wanted to become a parent
>>>>>and used a condom and spermicide, he has no right to make decisions
>>>>>about his "personal or family privacy."  He cannot abort the child;
>
>>Peter, get your attributions right.  I did not say the above.  Don did.
>
>>I know you have a crush on me, and can hardly post, even in your conver-
>>sations with others, without some reference to me, but please, make an
>>effort to get it *right* when you pretend to be actually quoting.
>
>>(not that it would surprise any of us that you show no interest, period,
>>in ever getting things right on the net......)
>
>I'm sorry, Adrienne.  I thought Susan Garvin was 
>an AnotherAdrienneRegardWannabe.  It appears that, instead, you are an
>AnotherSusanGarvinWannabe.
>
>Chaney has charged Susan Garvin with forgery but when last I heard, he
>was still trying to complete his documentation.  I on the other hand
>have it in my files: The post to which you are following up, exactly
>as it appeared.
>
>I'm not posting it here, for fear that I may be falling into a very clever
>trap you have set for me.  I mean, your forgery, if it could be called
>that, is so transparently obvious to anyone who has been on this net
>seven weeks, let alone seven years, that you must be joking, and must
>be counting on everyone else who is not a clueless newbie know you are
>joking.  

Peter, this is very loose talk. First of all, does this "fear" of yours 
have any rational basis? Then why mention it? And what about this talk
of "forgery"? Sure, you've hedged it with "if it could be called that", 
but you've already attached a stigma, and that can't be easily erased.
What if I were to say "Your rape, if it could be called that", would you
be satisfied that no stigma derives from such talk?

>I do, however, think you owe all the clueless newbies an apology.

You haven't shown that Adrienne's "joke" even exists, Peter, don't you
think it's a little premature to be asking her to apologize for it?
You sound a little like Jimmy "when are you going to apologize" Keegan
here. First, you should document this "joke" beyond a reasonable doubt,
and only THEN should you ask for an apology. Jumping the gun like that is 
rather inflammatory.

>Especially since you haven't put in any smileys.  But, as I have told
>others, that is your prerogative as Lady High Everything Else of 
>talk.abortion.  But, again, how is a clueless newbie supposed to
>know that?
>
>Note that there are exactly as many >>>> up there in the reference as
>there are in the part quoted.  That is as it should be, because the
>part quoted is from a FOLLOW-UP by Don Beaver to a post of yours.

This paragraph seems very confus[ed/ing] to me. The whole point of it seems 
to be that something fishy is going on -- you say in one sentence that quoted 
text should have "MORE" > leaders than their "reference", but, in another 
sentence, you point out that, in Adrienne's article, there are "exactly as 
many" > leaders to some quoted text, as to its alleged reference. Then,
having successfully identified that there's a problem here somewhere, you 
simply dismiss it with "That is as it should be". Huh?

>It's always the case (don't ask me why; after seven years on the net,
>you are in a much better position to know why) that there is one MORE
>>  pointing to things in the text than there is pointing to the 
>reference from which that text came from.

The reason for this phenomenon is obvious when one realizes that the "In 
article ..." language generated by lots of posting software is considered 
part of the quotER's article, not the quotEE's article. It therefore always 
is given one less > leader than the quoted text to which it refers, no matter 
how nested and "herring-boned" things get.

>Of course, your post had >>> where now there is >>>>, and my post where
>my alleged mis-attribution took place has >> in the same places, but
>again, all is as it should be.

Alleged mis-attribution? Peter, if you had gone back and checked, you
wouldn't have used the word "alleged". You _did_ leave in a spurious
attribution line. Maybe Adrienne reacted to it inappropriately, but if you're 
going to make such an issue out of this, throwing around loaded terms like
"forgery", I would have expected you to at least double-check what she was 
claiming. She may have made a mountain out of a molehill, but the molehill
did exist, and you were responsible for it.

>And of course, you edited out the attributions to Beaver, and to your
>own follow-up to Beaver, otherwise no one would have been fooled.

Yes, I have already noted how questionable this is. But imputing DELIBERATE
DECEPTION here, Peter -- "otherwise no one would have been fooled" -- is
I believe unwarranted and escalatory.

>Other readers please note: way up there, you will see a reference to
>a post by Adrienne preceded by >>>>, a reference to a post by me
>preceded by >, and nothing in between.  This is due to deletions by
>adrienne, which I can document.

This is just a restatement of the previous paragraph. Why do you address
it to "other readers"??

								- Kevin