dpw@unisec.UUCP (05/20/87)
In article <412@dasys1.UUCP> msmith@dasys1.UUCP (Mark E. Smith) writes: >In article <511@unisec.usi.com>, dpw@unisec.usi.com (Darryl P. Wagoner) writes: >> on your machine. If a system administrator allows a person to >> post an article from his machine without at least sending out a cancel >> message then that SA has a problem. >> > >What? Would you explain that? > >Do you mean Ann's sysop, Reed College at the time, is liable for >letting Ann post that original libellous and defamatory article about >me, to which I did not respond with flames but merely asked why I was >being publicly libelled and defamed? > What I meant was that the owner of the system can be sued for libel if the administrator doesn't take reasonable care to insure that a libelous statement is not generated and propagated from their system. I am not attempting to pass judgement on Mark's or Ann's actions. I will not comment of the remainder of Mark's article because it doesn't belong in this news group. A hint for News Admin's; if you put a line in your /usr/lib/news/sys like: localgen:world,na,usa,comp,news,soc,talk,sci,rec,local,ne:L: /bin/mail root you can keep a closer eye on what is going out of your machine without having to read every news group. -- Darryl Wagoner UniSecure Systems, Inc.; dpw@unisec.usi.com Newport, RI; (401)-849-0857 UUCP: {gatech|mirror|cbosgd|uiucdcs|ihnp4}!rayssd!unisec!dpw
mandel@well.UUCP (05/21/87)
bvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <887@killer.UUCP> Sender: Reply-To: mandel@well.UUCP (Tom Mandel) Followup-To: Distribution: usa Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA Keywords: Why am I getting the distinct impression that any disagreement with Mark Ethan Smith is tantamount to a personal attack and/or harassment? --Tom Mandel mandel@well.UUCP P.S. By the way, USENET is not a system entirely supported by public funds. It is paid for by the systems that participate, many of which are computers owned by private companies. In one way or another, most, if not all, of the costs are passed on to the various users. First Amendment rights to freedom of speech do not necessarily apply, although convention on the nets is to permit great discretion.
benson@alcatraz.ksr.com (Benson Margulies) (05/21/87)
> >Why am I getting the distinct impression that any disagreement >with Mark Ethan Smith is tantamount to a personal attack and/or >harassment? > >--Tom Mandel mandel@well.UUCP > This is not a flame of Tom. He just provided the excuse. Its too bad that none of you seem to have been active in 60's civil rights. If you were, you would twig quicker. When a person's perception of their life experience is one of constant and unremitting discrimination, denigration, and other hostility, even seemingly "minor" additional examples of the acts or attitudes are going to become intolerable. Comments that doubt that 6 million died send a lot of jews, including myself, right off the wall, no matter how "reasonable" or even "humorous." Its quite obvious that Mark is extraordinarily attuned to the discrimination and denigration of women which is a constant and unremitting feature of life in this society. Whether or not you personally agree, and whether or not you personally feel any responsibility for this state of affairs, the least you can do (if you want to have any solidarity with feminism) is to grant folks like Mark the right to their rage. You may not like it, it may not be pleasant to hear, but that's just too bad. Note that this is NOT a defense of anything Mark has or will say or do. It's not my intention to defend him, especially since I haven't seen any of the traffic on soc.women. He may have done the moral equivalent to blowing up building. That's not my point. This post is entirely designed as an answer to people like Tom Mandel (and even to a certain extent Erik Fair) who don't seem to see what the fuss is about. Back in the 60's, there were a lot of white people who didn't do much of anything in the way of active discriminating, and didn't see what the fuss was about. Those institutions seemed OK to them. Now it seems that most people see it differently. Whatever you personally think about the use of him/her/he/she, its no excuse not to see that the dispute stems from some pretty serious nastiness in society. But I can't resist suggesting one thought-experiment for people who disagree with mark, and are males. Imagine being referred to as "she" on an ongoing basis. Imagine it hard. Examine your feelings. I'll be very surprised if down there somewhere you don't feel insulted, and that the "accuracy" of the reference is the least of the issues. Benson I. Margulies Kendall Square Research Corp. harvard!ksr!benson All comments the responsibility ksr!benson@harvard.harvard.edu of the author, if anyone.
jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) (05/21/87)
>Imagine being referred to as "she" on an ongoing basis. Imagine it >hard. Examine your feelings. I'll be very surprised if down there >somewhere you don't feel insulted, and that the "accuracy" of the >reference is the least of the issues. I don't mean to fan the flames, but if I told people my name was "Linda", or "Sue", I would expect them to assume I was female, unless I specifically said otherwise. I don't understand why Mark should be so annoyed - her name is a traditionally male one. If that bothers her so much, I think she should take action: either change her name legally, or take to using a nickname or other transformation of her name that will not cause so much confusion. Otherwise, she should not be surprised at any gender confusion that occurs. >This post is entirely designed as an answer to people like Tom Mandel >(and even to a certain extent Erik Fair) who don't seem to see what >the fuss is about. I STILL DON'T understand what all the fuss is about. I don't subscribe to soc.women, I didn't see any of the fracas until it spilled over into news.misc. It appears to me that several people have overreacted to some ordinary USENET flaming. I have yet to see anything that looked remotely like discrimination due to gender. Can we please move on now? Flames cheerfully redirected to /dev/null, John P. Nelson
ghoti+@andrew.cmu.edu (Adam Stoller) (05/25/87)
[This is from the view of an "outsider" - sorry about the length] It has been intersting to see all this flaming - and is further intersting due to the recent-ness (pardon the lack of pure gramatical correctness) of the Foothead incident (for those of you in soc.women - this was another case of someone allegedly doing something and getting their rights revoked - I pass no judgement on whether or not the actions were warranted). It seems to me, that a preventive solution to this in the future would be to have a standardized form that people requesting accounts on various systems would have to complete before receiving their account (this could be email-ed, but might be more legal as a signed piece of US Mail). In the form, the requestee would be informed of the various rules and regulations that this particular site feels should be obeyed, and thus laying down the conditions under which someones account would be revoked. To some degree, sysops could even send these forms to current users, so that there wouldn't be problems of this sort creeping up again from someone who has had an account prior to the initiation of such a program. The form should obviously explain both the reasons for why an account would be revoked and the process under which these reasons would be considered justified (i.e. personal confrontation with the alledged abuser, prior to the revoking) - After all this is the "innnocent until proven guilty" America (isn't it? :-) My reason for suggesting this comes partially from practicallity and partically from the way our system is run. Being both an academic site and an arpanet site - we have guidelines from both the University and DARPA about what is considered proper behavior, and what to do when someone abuses their privelages. So far, we haven't had too many problems - once someone posted someone else's credit card numbers, but the incident was contained and the post removed from the system as soon as it was noticed. (I was not directly involved with the incident, so I don't know what happened to the user's account who posted the note) As far as Mark Smith goes, I seriously feel that the issue at hand has been burried under a tremendous amount of useless flaming - this has gone on so long, that I am not sure I even remember what brought the entire issue to light. Whether or not Mark is male or female did not (as I recall) have much bearing in the original perdicament, and merely came about in subsequent followups. In most cases, posts on the net (perhaps excluding such groups as soc.women - I don't know, I don't read it) do not bother to make any reference whatsoever to the gender of the post-ers - which I think is perfectly fine. The only place where it might get confusing is when someone bothered to refer back to someones post and say "he said..." or "she said..." If such a post had occured in response to one of Mark's posts (prior to all this hoo hah), it would have been up to Mark to correct the person, if Mark felt it was warranted to do so (although frankly, I think that would tend to lead us into what we are currently thrashing through, and that it would be better off left unsaid, as it probably wouldn't have been critical to the original post) Anyway, sorry for this long-winded post regarding this long-long-winded debate, but I felt that everyone has gotten so far off track that it was likely never to end. (Of course I could be wrong ;-) -fish **************** Disclaimer: The above only barely reflects my own opinion, and should certainly not be considered as reflecting any of my employers opinions....I'll let them post for themselves if they want to. ---------------- Earth, a great place to visit, but only worth staying ifyou can get along with the rest of the visitors. ****************