news@bbn.COM (News system owner ID) (11/19/88)
<1223@fig.bbn.com> <1076@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> Sender: Reply-To: jwalsh@cc6.BBN.COM (Jamie Walsh) Followup-To: news.groups Distribution: Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA Keywords: From: jwalsh@bbn.com (Jamie Walsh) Path: bbn.com!jwalsh In article <1076@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> nmg@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu.UUCP (Nancy M Gould) writes: >>>If enough people from ANY ETHNIC GROUP feel offended, the jokes >>>should not be posted. [comments about censorship ommitted] >I don't think that free speech is the issue here. I do not question >Brad Templeton's legal right to post any thing he likes to. The >real issue here is that of COMMON POLITENESS. Rec.humor.funny primarily came into being as a way to avoid the endless strings of run-on puns and re-re-re-posting of the same jokes in rec.humor, not as a seat of judgement of what topics may be considered funny. Vulgar humor has a large following; if you don't like it, unsubscribe to rec.humor and rec.humor.funny (and cable television). Common courtesy is usually exercised in rec.humor.funny by posting jokes that may be offensive in ROT13, with a notation in the header summary "offensive to <group>". I think this sufficiently covers common courtesy without resorting to censorship. I'm sure that after all this commotion the moderator will be more careful in his judgement of what may be offensive. If you do not wish to read offensive jokes on the net, then don't read the rotated jokes or unsubscribe to the group. They will still be posted to the unmoderated group, and they will still flourish off the net, so I don't see any point to banning them from the moderated group. -- jamie (jwalsh@cc6.bbn.com) "There's a seeker born every minute."