From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Mon Aug 18 2003 - 07:51:10 MDT
[I'm still having connectivity problems at home -- thus I'm using the BBS
interface for the first time. I guess I'm old-fashioned; I still like the
email list format, but I'm having trouble sending email from home.]
I’m very sorry to see Lee leave the list, but I have to count it as a mistake
on Lee’s part. The mistake arises from what the concept of free speech means
in the specific context of this forum. Everyone probably agrees that some
kind of specific post could justify excluding someone from the list. Hard
questions arise when we realize we almost certainly wouldn’t agree on the
precise limits beyond which a single post could justify exclusion. We enter
the ground of irony when we realize that even some people who disagreed very
strongly with Mike Lorrey don’t support his exclusion (vid. Hubert Mania’s
post of today.)
There will be even more disagreement about whether, rather than a single
post, an overall approach to posting justifies exclusion. But we can’t
escape this hard question in maintaining an online forum. Take a look at
almost-completely wide-open fora like Yahoo groups and BBSs: No “tone”
criteria at all are maintained there and that kind of forum is the lowest
form of online interaction as a result. I doubt many of our subscribers and
web readers waste their time by reading such groups, even though one might
occasionally find something of value there.
To return to the concept of free speech, I urge subscribers to consider that
ExI is not a government, and the values and rules regarding governmental
regulation of speech don’t necessarily translate into matters of private
list governance. The metaphor of the salon discussed here some weeks back
is much more apt. That metaphor ought to suggest that matters of tone and
style will be much more important in how the list can and should be governed
than the extreme sensitivity to any curtailment of the right to expression
that the metaphor of government regulation of publishing or media entails.
Persistent combativeness and lack of politeness can and should be a factor
– an important factor – in applying the sanction of exclusion in a private,
focused forum. Someone whose posts are consistently personalistic and which
generate continuing personal unpleasantness can’t stay in a semi-public,
semi-private forum forever without the overall tone of the forum being
degraded.
I know there is a core disagreement among some people about whether values
of politeness and personal tone should be a factor in list governance. To
those who maintain that they should not, I urge you to consider that the
packaging of ideas IS important and that a community can be and will be judged
by the manners it tolerates. Having begun with noting an element of irony,
I’ll end this overly-long post by pointing to another irony: The very act of
enforcing minimal standards of tone and style itself generates unpleasantness
and ill-feelings among many. But this is also a challenge of freedom: Real
liberty is perforce accompanied by the duty to realize such values, or freedom
becomes corrosive to civilization. The paradox is resolved by what many have
noted in the wake of Mike Lorrey’s exclusion: Ultimately he is free to post
elsewhere, create his own forum, post web pages, etc.
Finally, I urge those who are unhappy to look again at Natasha’s post: New
organization for our discussions is in the works and any exclusion from this
forum is temporary.
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
My blog: http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html
---- This message was posted by Greg Burch to the Extropians 2003 board on ExI BBS. <http://www.extropy.org/bbs/index.php?board=67;action=display;threadid=56803>
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