From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue May 28 2002 - 18:00:55 MDT
John Clark writes
> Lee wrote
>>were a list moderator to end a thread, or to take any forceful
>>action whatsoever, we must conclude that censorship has occurred.
> That's editing, it may be bad or it may be good but it's not censorship,
> that's when somebody puts you in jail (libeling the state) or ruins you
> financially (libeling a person) because of what you said. That is always
> evil.
Well, Dictionary.com suggests
cen·sor·ship Pronunciation Key (snsr-shp)
n.
1. The act, process, or practice of censoring.
2. The office or authority of a Roman censor.
3. Psychology. Prevention of disturbing or painful thoughts or
feelings from reaching consciousness except in a disguised form.
and
cen·sor Pronunciation Key (snsr)
n.
1. A person authorized to examine books, films, or other
material and to remove or suppress what is considered
morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.
2. An official, as in the armed forces, who examines
personal mail and official dispatches to remove
information considered secret or a risk to security.
3. One that condemns or censures.
4. One of two officials in ancient Rome responsible for taking
the public census and supervising public behavior and morals.
5. Psychology. The agent in the unconscious that is
responsible for censorship.
So it's rather general, and it would be correct usage to say
that "a list moderator censored a [post, thread, topic]".
Hal writes
> [Motorcycle Killing would be] off topic for this list,
> that's all, just like sewing curtains or training dogs
> would be. It's not a grand moral issue, it's just a
> matter of practicality. There are a million discussion
> forums in the world, and they exist to help people find
> topics of interest. If people ignore the forum topic
> and just post anything, then you have chaos and
> you can't have interesting discussions.
Having far less on-line experience than you, let me ask:
has it in fact been a common problem on lists with people
engaging in discussions that by their own admission have
nothing to do with the obvious theme of a forum?
> Don't you agree that it makes sense to organize discussion forums
> by topic? And that it follows that some things are off topic?
Oh yes, no doubt about that. My question is always "who decides?".
Some people might, for example, argue that the subject of infanticide
*would* be on-topic for Extropians, since it's interwoven with the
extropian topics of freedom and sentience. Others, naturally, would
find the alleged tie-in far less persuasive. So who decides?
If I saw a topic that struck me as totally unrelated to this
forum, and for some reason I lurked it awhile out of general
curiosity, then I might finally post to it and say, "What has
this to do with this forum's theme?". If the response was, in
effect, "nothing, really", then I'd suggest they go elsewhere.
But the hard cases won't turn out that way, of course. So *my*
own choices would reduce to continuing to debate its relevance
with them, or plonking them, or ignoring them. What would you
do? What should anyone do?
Lee
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