At 3:43 AM -0600 2/12/02, Paul Nuernberger wrote:
>We do not need anything grandiose. A simple set of 'doing this will get you
>this' type statements should suffice - i.e. Verbal abuse of another member
>by profanity or racial/ethnic slur gets you tossed for 30 days, repeat
>offense is a permanent ban.
>
>I purposely built some tolerance into that statement. Others may feel it
>needs to be stronger.
The problem with making any statements of specific consequence is
that they then have to be enforced. And then the problem arises that
whenever you enforce one of those rules, the person will most likely
believe they have been treated unfairly, and then you will have long
arguments over what should really happen to them, and who else got
away with doing what, etc.
The other problem you run into is how to define an infraction,
like your example of 'profanity'. I notice that many Europeans will
use the English word 'shit' at the drop of a hat. To me, this is
profanity, and I would have to be *very* angry to ever use that word
(I would normally say 'crap'). Should I call for users of the
's-word' to be kicked off the list at every opportunity? Should
someone offended at my use of the word 'crap' call for me to be
booted?
For me, the answer is an easy no. If I am slightly offended in
the way someone says something, I can ignore it or respond. Big
deal. If I was *really* offended, I could filter, or 'killfile', the
person. I have never done so.
Another subject is the so called 'ethnic slur'. From what I
remember reading, the cause of this firestorm of controversy was the
statement that 'all frogs are cowards' (or something similar).
<SARCASM> Wooo-hoo, I have never heard such a terrible, degrading
thing before in my entire life.</SARCASM> Not a nice thing to say,
surely. But as I remember, there were similar things being said
about Americans after the Sep 11 attacks and the American response to
them. There were a lot of heated responses, but I don't remember any
huge 'kick this guy off the list' movement then.
BTW, there *was* an on-list apology for the remark I quoted above,
yet some subscribers continue to insist that a) an apology was never
made, b) that it wasn't good enough, or c) that it wasn't personally
made out to them. It's in the archives, read it again and get over
it. Here, I'll even give you the URL:
<http://www.newtontalk.net/archive/newtontalk.2002-02/1019.html>
I subscribe to this list, and many others, because I want to
communicate with others and hear the viewpoints of others. Those who
don't want to hear dissenting or contrary opinions on anything are
certainly free to start their own list and moderate it themselves.
I like the 'hands-off' approach that we have with this list. That
said, it probably wouldn't hurt to have a Charter type of statement
that we could use as a focus and reminder. But please don't turn it
into the 10 Commandments.
Regards,
- Lou Forlini
Software Engineer
System Support Products, Inc.
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