From: karish@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Chuck Karish)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: WELL anonymity policy
Date: 22 Dec 1992 02:28:10 GMT
Organization: Mindcraft, Inc.
Distribution: inet
NNTP-Posting-Host: pangea.stanford.edu

In article <1h5qkoINNl60@agate.berkeley.edu> spp@zabriskie.berkeley.edu
(Steve Pope) writes:
>karish@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Chuck Karish) writes:
>|spp@zabriskie.berkeley.edu (Steve Pope) writes:
>|>jfw@neuro.duke.edu (John F. Whitehead) writes:
>|>> Anonymity is available 
>|>
>|>You mean "pseudonymity is available"  -- don't complain about
>|>my misnomer, then use it yourself!!
>|
>|Another reason people want pseudonyms: to stay a bit further
>|out of the line of fire from those who take intellectual
>|disagreements personally, and escalate to scatology and
>|personable abuse on the slightest of pretexts.
>
>OK Chuck, you have now added a complete non-sequitar to
>this thread.  Please explain yourself.  

I'm sorry, Steve.  I excised some of the ruder portions
of your article (<1h5qkoINNl60@agate.berkeley.edu>) out
of consideration for the other readers off this group.
Your response was abusive to a degree that was wildly
out of proportion to the previous tone of the discussion.

Other, less assertive people shrink from this sort of abuse.
One of the tenets of the WELL is that it's worthwhile
to be courteous in order to maintain an environment
that's comfortable for a wide variety  of people.

>|>The only *consistent* way of deciding who is eligible to
>|>have a pseudonymous account is to simply leave it up to
>|>the discretion of subscriber.  Anything else is arbitrary.
>|>Since it is not done this way, I am correct in saying that policy 
>|>is inconsistent.  
>|
>|This is the first time I've seen "consistent" held
>|up as an antonym for "arbitrary".  
>
>Not a direct antonym, however it's obvious that
>given the usual definitions of the terms, if a policy
>is arbitrary, then it cannot possibly be consistent. 
>That is the meaning of my statement above.

Your statement above is wrong.  If, in the course
of writing a technical paper, I define "up" to have
the meaning usually associated with the term "down",
and I use "up" in this sense throughout my paper,
I'm being both arbitrary and consistent.  And the
paper will be judged to be logically and technically
correct (though somewhat perverse).

The obvious followup question is "consistent with what?".
For your usage to be meaningful, you have to ask and
answer this question.  From the context, I assume that
the answer is "with accepted concepts of basic fairness".
And I'll still disagree with you.

>|We've all heard the
>|famous dictum about those who see consistency as an
>|end in itself.
>
>Another non-sequitar.  What IS your point??

It's a literary reference.  A well-known quotation.  You
can look it up, using "consistency" as a key word.

>|The WELL tries more to be about people and about human
>|interaction than it is about legalisms.  The managers have
>|been able to exercise their powers in ways that have earned
>|them the trust of the subscribers.  The subscribers don't
>|mind that some of the policies are dealt with according to
>|the managers' best judgement, because they trust that
>|judgement.
>|
>|What better criterion than subscriber satisfaction
>|can you propose to decide whether their policies are
>|appropriate for a commercial service?
>
>I do not think the WELL's policies are off limits
>for discussion just because their subscribers are
>all happy.  If you lobotomized all 12-year-olds then
>the high schools would be full of kids who are
>happy.  Does that make lobotimization good policy?

Knowing that the WELL subscribers are not pacified
children, and that, on the contrary, they're among
the most demanding audiences around in terms of
fairness and political correctness, I don't feel the
need to answer this in terms of formal logic.  If
that audience is happy with the policies, I trust that
they're at least reasonable, if not exemplary.

Yes, if the lobotomized 12-year-olds like it, it's
an adequate service for them.  I don't see that it's
cost effective for me to subscribe to Prodigy, but I don't
deny its value to people who value that sort of thing.
Just as I don't deny peoples' right to be satisfied with
Dionne Warwick as a fake talk show hostess.

>|>Example: suppose a user asked for a pseudonymous account because they
>|>are simply too shy to socialize on the computer under
>|>their real name?
>|>
>|>My guess -- correct me if I'm wrong -- the Well admins would
>|>say "sorry" to such a request.
>|
>|Mr. Pope, your guess is not well informed.  
>
>Justify this gratuitous, groundless remark if you can.
>
>My guess is logical given the facts in evidence.

This part of the thread grew out of your statement that
it was "pompous" to draw conclusions about possible
responses of WELL managers in a hypothetical situation.
Now you seem to be claiming that the "facts in evidence"
are the only relevant facts.  My remark was in the way of
advising you that this is not correct.

>The only public 
>information the WELL gives out on this policy is that "anonymous 
>accounts are not accepted except by special arrangement".  This 
>directly implies that they are not given out routinely.  Which
>implies that the most common reason for wanting a pseudonymous
>account -- simple shyness about posting -- is not acceptable
>to the WELL admins.

This is the sort of decision that is made on the basis
of common sense in the context of a particular subscriber's
needs.  I disagree with the conclusion implicit in this
thread that there's something inherently unfair about
having an informal policy, rather than a more bureaucratic
one, about who is eligible for this particular sort
of special treatment.
--

    Chuck Karish          karish@mindcraft.com
    (415) 323-9000 x117   karish@pangea.stanford.edu