Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 11:23:36 08/02/01
Go up one level in this thread
On August 02, 2001 at 11:45:14, Wayne Lowrance wrote: >Bruce, I do not understand why you would come close to delete this post and let >all of the bad language and profanity go on here from time to time. I have a >Grandson who is very interested in chess and the programs. I would give him this >forum except for the language. >I agree with you that this post should have been deleted. It is deflamatory. >Wayne This place was founded by people who were fed up with internet lunatics. I don't know if you've ever dealt with an internet lunatic, but it is very difficult. There was a guy on a usenet group (not the chess group), who liked to impersonate people. You'd write a post that this guy didn't like, and the next day there'd be something in there, apparently from you, explaining how you'd like to kill some Jews or molest a kid. Once when the guy did this to me, I received a threat from another poster who declared that I didn't deserve to live. The guy also wrote a post ostensibly from me where "I" tried to hire someone to kill him. I ended up calling the police and FBI a few times, and once I had a cop in my house while I printed out a bunch of stuff for him. I also did the lawyer thing for a while. The situation in the computer chess usenet group was never this bad (for me), but it was bad enough that we migrated here. This place exists primarily in order to provide members recourse against internet lunatics. If someone calls you nasty names here, to the point where you'd ordinarily start pestering the guy's ISP and running up against that brick wall, you can send an email to a moderator and we'll get rid of the idiot. Maybe not at the point where you are first bothered by him, but we don't allow stalkers here and eventually they go bye bye. Notice that I've said nothing about profanity. This place wasn't founded to get rid of profanity. There is nothing in the charter about profanity. I believe that the founders considered this, and we decided that we didn't care to make a "no profanity" rule. Personally, I think that that there wouldn't be much here for kids, anyway. If a moderator tries to put severe limits on profanity, I think that a lot of people who read the group will get pretty upset, because this isn't covered by the charter, and because it will lead to a big nationalistic discussion between people who are in a place where profanity is supposedly welcomed in ordinary conversation between people of all ages and genders, and others who do not want to see it. However, any moderator candidate is welcome to run on such a platform, and if the "no profanity" faction is strong enough we might see a ban on it. I assume that it's also possible for the membership to "guide" the moderators by having a poll on the topic or something. If a majority don't want it here, I wouldn't have a problem enforcing a "no profanity" rule. When the heck is this term up, by the way? Isn't it about time that someone else does this job? bruce
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