The Logic Off Topic list

Thoughts from the mind of Jeremy Martin, 28-10-2002:

>  > The problem is: where do you draw the border?  At some arbitrary
>>  point, apparently.  Because someone decides something is offensive.
>>  Or because someone decides something is not appropriate.  Or
>>  because 3 or 4 members complain to the moderators.  Or whatever. 
>>  And it's this arbitrariness (?) that I protest against.
>
>Of course we have to have use an arbitrary point. If we had no rules
>at all, "as this list approaches infinity" a never ending flamewar is
>bound to happen, eventually. I don't think you want us to not use an
>arbitrary point - I think you'd rather we just used your own
>(arguably less) arbitrary point, instead of ours.

No, I don't want you to use 'a point' at all -- that has been my 
point (uh, pun intended?) all along.  There will never be a never 
ending flamewar (if only because the sun dies in approx. another 5 
billion years. :-).  Seriously though: flamewars tend to end by 
themselves, always.  That's 16 years of internet experience talking 
(usenet, webbased lists, email lists, etc).  I've hardly ever seen a 
flamewar go on for more than 4 weeks -- and those were serious 
exceptions.  And if such a thing every occurs, I know where the 
delete-key is.  If we take all the time all of us have spent 
discussing this subject, and if we'd used this same time to 
constantly hit the delete-key, we could have deleted all 
inappropriate, offensive, too-off-topic, etc threads for the next 20 
years.  It's that easy, really.  So, once more, I don't see the point 
of stepping in at _all_ , at whichever point.

I never anywhere suggested that I could offer a better criterium as 
to when moderators should step in.  At the risk of sounding arrogant: 
I know beter than to make such pointless suggestions.  And if you 
still think I try to defend my own, equally arbitrary "point of 
drawing the line", then I'm afraid I haven't managed very well in 
getting my point across.  I'm sorry.


-- 
Hendrik Jan Veenstra  <h@...>
Omega Art: http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html