Re:Lee Corbin's Goodbye

From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Mon Aug 18 2003 - 07:51:10 MDT

  • Next message: John K Clark: "Re: Lee Corbin's Goodbye"

    [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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