perlman@wanginst.UUCP (Gary Perlman) (02/21/85)
I hope this message can explain some of what has gone on. Not very ago, I was upset by some personal hate mail I was receiving. It was perhaps motivated by some of my postings to net.sources. The hate mail was private, not public postings to the net. Although I dislike taking heat ON the net as much as anyone, I have not seen the sort of provokation in public as in private. In many cases, public criticisms are well founded, and some are constructive. They have seldom been in poor taste. To satisfy some persons' curiosity, I found that I dreaded reading my personal mail because I had received hate mail from several people. This mail was in, I thought, particularly poor taste. Some of the topics included: still and deformed births of my children, and my ethnic background. I presume these attacks are not serious. But they are similar, and perhaps legally identical to, obscene phone calls. They upset me and I decided to leave the net to make them stop. I began deleting-without-reading mail from certain persons and sites. Eventually, I stopped getting the hate mail. To set everyone straight, Peter Honeyman never sent me this type of hate mail. His public remarks were harmless (and I believe groundless). His personal notes, although an attempt to be imflamatory, were more like prank phone calls than obscene phone calls. They were never in poor taste. Some were very clever. Some, but not all, of the hate mail I found offensive did come from people at Princeton, but none from Peter, who I believe has better things to do with his time. Because it seems Peter shares his messages with other people at Princeton, it may be that other people tried to imitate his witty style. I would like to add that the comparison of my net contributions to Peter Honeyman's is not appropriate. I have heard from people who know that Honeyman has made the sort of contributions to the net that make the net possible, and for that he should be appreciated. But, the net is not a competition, but supposed to be cooperative. Thank you to all the people who sent messages of support. Please stop this discussion. I guess this is another section to add to my paper on research on the network. Gary Perlman/Wang Institute/Tyngsboro, MA/01879/(617) 649-9731