gill (09/01/82)
#R:cbosgd:-257000:physics:18700002:000:1893 physics!gill Aug 31 23:34:00 1982 One of physics' users has brought to my attention that I shouldn't make threats about network disconnection light heartedly, and pointing out the small difference between such unilateral decisions and network censorship. True, true. But the problem is that netnews doesn't easily allow the network to route different news groups through different paths. If this were possible, I'd simply arrange to get net.jokes.questionable from some other mature source. The difference between network censorship and quitting the club are many: My administration of physics is recognized while no such equivalent exists for netnews. Part of my job is to decide what facilities to provide users. I do not recognize any such position regarding netnews. My reasons for networking disconnection would not be to censor, but instead to indicate the medium unworthy of our users and our resources. Our users are not children and they shall not be told what to say. I wouldn't have to do anything active to disconnect these systems. The maintenance of netnews on my systems takes up substantial disk and communications resources. I would only have to abandon the constant politicking necessary to persuade our money sources that netnews is worthwhile. It is a fine line, but I see no other way to stop this infantile discussion about how to dictate policy on the network. As one of our users says: "Flames are harmless unless someone does something about it." I hope to impress upon the network that "doing something" akin to censorship will leave you with a very uninteresting, and, if the "disconnect from the prude net" movement spreads, very small, network. There is a price for freedom and liberty. We must be prepared to pay it. I disagree with Mark: the price of net.jokes is well worth not only the jokes, but the freedom such jokes imply. Sincerely, Gill Pratt ...alice!gill OR gill@mc
thomas (10/09/82)
I tried to reply to this, but can't get through alice. We have been seeing a tremendous number of duplicate articles, all over a month old, from physics!gill. This is a tremendous pain, not to mention a waste of cpu time and disk space. Would somebody in charge at physics find this and stop it. =Spencer