What happened to virology?

[Keith Stuckly]

On 23/5/93 Mary Songster wrote...(an excerpt)

  Bionet.virology is not the place to be discussing
>guns, ATF, ect.  This is a forum for virologists.  I'm
>disappointed more than anything else.  People on the net
>encounter many different people all over the world.  One
>must remain tolerant of other views and  attitudes and I
>always try.  However, newsgroups are established for
>certain purposes. The sad part is there are several newsgroups
> all ready established to discuss any of the topics that have
>emerged on bionet.viology.  I always found it amazing that
>people are so quick to post something that they would think
>twice about saying.  For all of you in the US that are so concerned
> government controlling your lives, censorship on the net is
>not all that improbable.  Just keep that in mind.
>Mary S. Songster-Alpin	   Mary_Songster_Alpin at ncsu.edu
>Dept. of Micro., Path., and Parasit.
>North Carolina State University
>College of Veterinary Medicine
>
>
Agree entirely with your sentiments. Up to now I have resisted fanning the
flames but now can't resist a moment's reflection on the future direction of
this newsgroup and the net in general.

Really I don't think the great majority of the Ebola posters over the last 2
weeks meant any harm by their enthusiatic postings. I guess most were used
to the raw cut and thrust evident in a lot of alt.xxx type usegroups on the
net, and didn't understand at first the self-regulating (should that be
self-restraining) nettiquette rules which most here adhere to. Of course
when challenged about repetitive and inappropriate postings a lot of people
immediately came to incorrect conclusions about elitism.  On the other hand,
some of the repetitive posters did actually publicly apologize when they
realized their mistake. 

However, the uncontrolled postings effectively (albeit temporarily) reduced
the effectiveness of this newsgroup as a communication tool. As predicted by
some, the Ebola interest has waned probably because a lot of the flagrant
posters have a very short attention span.

Meanwhile I, like everyone else, was receiving >100 e-mail messages per day.
I soon learnt that any postings by people who won't openly identify
themselves (pseudonames) were the worst time wasters/abusers. So, Mary the
answer is simple, DON'T EVEN BOTHER READING THE NONSENSE MAIL, its usually
self evident from the titles! The time wasters will eventually give up if
their egos aren't pandered to.

The numbers of people signing up to the net is almost exponential at the
moment. A lot of people will treat the net like they perceive society at the
moment, that is abuse it if they can get away with it. Rules are inevitable
just like laws, rules and regulations are inevitable. Anarchy never works,
but neither does over-control. Self-regulation will always be abused by some. 

Moderation? Yes a good idea but I guess somebody would have to volunteer
lots of their time to sort out the postings. You volunteering Mary?

I have an alternative suggestion. Perhaps users can be verified by first
obtaining a user ID no., and using this ID no. to even be able to log on to
this group, this is already being done on the Web (eg Hotwired). Once again,
this may mean administration by somebody. Inappropriate message posters can
then very easily have their access cancelled, a form of moderation I guess.

The rush of inappropriate postings could easily happen again. Sorry this was
long-winded...anybody have some comments?