From: de5@ORNL.GOV (Dave Sill)
Subject: Re: No more short stories from rauser@sfu.ca
Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 12:21:03 GMT

Please accept my apologies, readers, for continuing this non-good-news
discussion here.  This is my final word on this topic in this forum.  I'll be
happy to correspond by e-mail with anyone wanting to continue the debate.

In article <1992Jul29.000843.25215@reed.edu>, kuch@reed.edu (Jerry Kuch) writes:
>In article <l7biv7INNd0@appserv.Eng.Sun.COM> danoc@earlybird.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan O'Connell [CONTRACTOR]) writes:
>>
>>Well Gee, you sure are a wet blanket. I suppose using your "k" 
>>key was just to much work for you, huh? You must be pretty
>>pleased with yourself. Guess things are kind of slow in support
>>over there.

I'm ORNL's new admin, so I'm responsible for ensuring that the groups we carry
are appropriate.  Several of Rauser's stories contained material that was
definitely not acceptable, e.g., the recent rape scene in "Danielle".  So I
was faced with either ceasing to carry the group, removing the unacceptable
material, or stopping the material from being posted in the first place.

I felt we had as much right to carry the group as the next site, that the
material was clearly inappropriate for the group, and, since there was only
one "offender", I decided to try to get him to stop.  I pointed out to him
that his stories were not "good news", being works of fiction, and that there
were other newsgroups where they would be appropriate.  He refused to stop, so
I appealed to the news/mail admins at his site.  They forward my complaint to
him, and he then volunteered to cease posting stories here.

Yes, I could have used my "k" key.  But the point is that I and the readers
of alt.good.news shouldn't have to do that.  The reason we have different
newsgroups on different topics is so we don't have to weed through stuff we
aren't interested in.

>The funny thing is that I've seen some people post to this group that they
>actually enjoyed Rauser's stories.

I really have no problem with his stories, per se.  They simply don't belong
here, though.

>It disturbs me that the administration
>at SFU would be so pinheaded as to crack down on him for his stories.

It disturbs me that you're so eager to label them pinheads, especially
considering they were only doing their jobs, not cracking down on him.

>It's not like he was riddling USENET with commercial announcements or hate
>propaganda or something.

That's like saying a thief isn't murderer.  So what?  Was what he was doing
right?  Is a story a about a girl getting raped by two drunk guys, poisoning
one of them, and being killed by cops good news?  Is a story about a prisoner
being tortured and executed good news?

>Don't like it, don't read it.  Kill files were made for a reason.

If everyone followed this silly line of reasoning, we'd have a mess of
ill-defined, incoherent newsgroups.  Why would we even need multiple
newsgroups?  We could just have one big newsgroup, and everyone could skip
what they didn't want to read.  The net would be less informative and useful
for the great majority of participants.

Call me a net.cop if you want, but that's the way it is.

-- 
Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov)           For every Bill Joy there is a Kirk McKusick.
Martin Marietta Energy Systems     For every Bill Gates there is a Richard
Workstation Support                Stallman.                     --Paul Graham