Author: Amir Ban
Date: 06:35:36 05/17/98
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On May 15, 1998 at 12:16:33, Steven Schwartz wrote: >MY PERSONAL THOUGHTS.... >I would like to see a very short biography on each >nominee - to include: age, occupation (if any), chess >program fathered (if any), country, family, interests, >perhaps even personal thoughts about what types of >posts should be deleted or not deleted. > Amir Ban 41, married + 2, Ramat-Hasharon Israel Author of Junior M.Sc. Computer Science, co-founder and employee of M-Systems, currently as Chief Technology Officer. Anyone who considers voting for me should take into account my views. If you disagree with this, please don't vote for me: The role of the moderator is to ensure that discussion can take place on this newsgroup, and to prevent a situation where people feel they have to go elsewhere to have it. To enable this to happen, it may be necessary to shield this newsgroup from insults of a certain kind, and from what can be described as pure noise. That discussion on computer chess should have this kind of moderation is a strange but proven fact. I will not automatically shield anyone who thinks he has been insulted, even painfully, but I will vote without hesitation to do that if I think that the insult is of the sort that no one would even care to defend against. For example, I don't see any connection between any computer chess issue and nazism or fascism. On the other hand, an accusation, even a serious and insulting one, is allowed so long as I can see a connection to the issue discussed and think that it makes sense to argue with it, even if I don't agree with it (an example is Ossie Weiner's letter posted here). If someone on this newsgroup feels wronged or insulted by this kind of attack, I will ask him to argue the case on its own merits by posting an argument or a simple denial. I don't see this kind of moderation as limiting free speech, or, god forbid, censorship. I note that the freest people are the elected members of democratic parliaments, who often have special privileges and protection that ordinary citizens don't have (such as, in my country, immunity against court action), to enable them to speak their mind freely. Yet every parliament has procedures, etiquette committees, and sanctions for those who don't follow the rules on proper discussion. Those rules, rather than limiting free speech, ensure it against those that would shout it down or intimidate it. Amir
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