prabhu@nas.nasa.gov (Dinesh K. Prabhu) (10/24/90)
Well folks, it is time for our first controversy. A while back I had censored an article written by Mr. Zenith and we have at least one unhappy netter (I am understating it) now. I had censored it because I felt that the s-word was not particularly pertinent to the discussion. In retrospect, the idea of censoring the article was bad and was an error in judgement. My apologies to any of you that feel strongly about censorship of articles. I will not censor any more articles if they contain "offensive" words, I will simply reject them and have the contributors "clean" them up. What do you feel about this issue ? Is it alright to accept articles that contain "colorful" (for lack of a better word) language ? The author of the article in question claims to have used just such language as a "spiritual analogy". Anyways, this is a sort of local referendum. So please send me e-mail on this issue and I will summarize the results (not just yes/no votes but opinions also) of this ten days from the date this article is sent from my site, i.e., the referendum ends midnight Friday, Nov. 2, 1990. Regards Dinesh
prabhu@nas.nasa.gov (Dinesh K. Prabhu) (11/10/90)
This article is regarding the referendum on censorship in this
newsgroup. I received 18 replies and on the basis of these
opinions I have decided on the following
1) *I will not censor any articles* (A Bart Simpson-ism ;-))
2) Articles containing mild profanity will not be rejected as
long as the articles stick to the topic being discussed.
3) Inflammatory articles (flames and personal attacks) will be
rejected
My thanks to all those who replied, especially Ken Blackman who
has given this topic a great deal of thought.
One final issue - one of the readers had suggested that this
newsgroup be unmoderated for a two-week period. I am quite
sorry but this cannot be done. Moderation of this group is
necessary. Otherwise we'll be flooded with political articles
from soc.culture.indian (I have rejected all of them) and
sundry articles from "fundamentalists" (of all kinds). The
only choice available is to have a vote to move the group
into the "talk" hierarchy and lots of sites do not carry "talk"
groups.
The next six articles are the opinions I received on the subject
of censorship in this newsgroup. I have edited (not censored :-))
the articles to the extent that I have removed the mail headers,
quoted material and signatures. This was done to keep the
bandwidth to a minimum. Hope y'all don't mind.
Regards
Dinesh