Community standards (was Re: fuck you, indeed)

[Mark Hamburg <mark_hamburg@baymoon.com>]

on 11/17/02 4:20 AM, Kim Flint at kflint@loopers-delight.com wrote:

> the list is what everybody puts into it, not what one person puts into 
>it.
> If all you contribute is an I Hate Miko diatribe, then you are not being
> any more useful than he is. Why not fill the space with something good?

Perhaps because just a bit of cyanide tends to ruin the entire pot of
coffee.

Since Kim doesn't want to be a moderator and I don't think most people on
the list want Kim to be a moderator, that leaves us with community 
standards
and a question of how to enforce them.

I like acerbic when it's at least marginally on topic.

I don't have a problem with profanity.

I have a strong distaste for political correctness.

What troubled me here was that in response to a simple technical 
discussion,
Miko verbally assaulted one of the participants. If it had been in response
to one of the "Miko must go" messages, that wouldn't have triggered this
sort of reaction. At least then, it would have been the case of someone
picking a fight with Miko. This was a case of Miko taking a swing at 
someone
more or less at random.

Do we condone that? Do we have no community standards? Am I going to have 
to
admit that the conservatives are right and that liberal attitudes have
completely destroyed community standards? Am I going to feel driven to 
start
supporting Republicans or at least the downtown merchants in Santa Cruz?

The SP-808 list suffers from this sort of problem a lot. It's distasteful.
It severely limits the utility of the list. I don't want to see Loopers
become another case of this.

So, in my opinion we need community standards. They should be broad, but
they shouldn't say that essentially anything goes. Since we don't want Kim
to act as moderator, that leaves us with public condemnation and shunning 
as
a way to express those standards.

Mark