From: del@fnx.uucp (Dag Erik Lindberg)
Newsgroups: pnw.personals
Subject: Re: follow-up
Date: 16 Aug 92 20:02:30 GMT
Article-I.D.: fnx.1992Aug16.200230.2977
Organization: I/Ovations

In <1992Aug15.052811.22290@nwnexus.WA.COM> edm@halcyon.com (Ed Morin) writes:

>bobsarv@microsoft.com (Bob Sarver) writes:

>>PS:  No, I am not in favor of revoking this guy's posting privileges.  But in 
>>the absence of a moderator, there is nothing wrong with exerting a little
>>peer pressure to make someone see how their behavior is uncalled-for.

>Ah, net police.  I knew they existed somewhere...

Call it what you will, but in the absence of any real governing body on
the usenet, 'peer pressure' is all we have to maintain any semblance of
a usefull medium.  Later you liken this newsgroup to a street corner.
But a more appropriate analogy would be a series of public meeting
rooms.  Each devoted to a particular subject.  You can bet that in that
environment, a person drifting completely off subject, or acting in a
way that is offensive to 90% of the people there, you can bet that the
crowd in the room would be very vocal in exerting 'peer pressure'.

IMHO a large part of the reason the net has gone from an extremely high
quality, low noise *resource* to what we have today:  a bigger version
of a local BBS with twits galore, very low signal to noise ratio,
requiring more and more advanced software to filter through the dreck to
find anything of interest...  a large part of the reason is the
abdication of responsibility by the more seasoned users for exerting
'peer pressure' regarding appropriate behaviour.  The attitude now seems
to be exactly yours, Ed, that anybody should be allowed to say anything
anywhere because it's just a street corner and we can't impinge on their
freedom of speech.

Well, even on a street corner, or especially in the meeting room analogy
I propose, people will be quite vocal in using 'peer pressure' to
correct inappropriate behaviour.  In fact on a street corner, radically
inappropriate behaviour can result in physical injury.  In the 'meeting
room' analogy, a person that insists on talking completely off subject,
or is verbally abusive, can be physically ejected from the room.  Does
that make the people 'thought police'?  Or do they simply want to have a
quality, intellectual discussion without undue digression and verbal
abuse?

The answer, of course, is that it could be either.  But the meeting room
belongs to the people in it, and they should have every right to
influence the quality of the information being presented in that room.
Unfortunately, we of usenet have little or no power to physically eject
anyone from a newsgroup, regardless of how abusive or off-subject they
get.  ALL WE HAVE is peer pressure.  And since so many now refuse to use
that, or have simply given up, we are reaping the results.  I,
personally, have started using local BBS's again, as the tables have
turned:  they now have better signal to noise and more appropriate
behaviour than the usenet.

There is an old saying on usenet that used to be funny, and now is all
too painfully true: "I'm just shucking usenet oysters, looking for pearls
of wisdom."  I'm not advocating censorship.  I'm just saying that 
material should be appropriate for the newsgroup it is posted in.  There are
newsgroups where rude behaviour is appropriate, and there are newsgroups
where discussion of religion is appropriate.  pnw.personals aint' it!

-- 
del AKA Erik Lindberg                             uunet!pilchuck!fnx!del
                          Who is John Galt?