Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!nl.cs.cmu.edu!mjc
From: mjc@nl.cs.cmu.edu (Monica Cellio)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Idiots! Re-propogate talk.bizarre! (Re: let's quit...)
Message-ID: <7341@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 14 Dec 89 16:46:32 GMT
References: <3290@hub.UUCP> <19780002@hpsemc.HP.COM>
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University
Lines: 31

>I haven't seen any blackmail.  What I have seen, however, is several
>people (including Pete, who you were responding to) stating that from
>experience, they know that removing talk.bizarre would cause havoc on
>the net. 

And this fear is justified, because there seem to have been successful
blackmail threats in the past.

I'm not suggesting that we nuke talk.bizarre.  I don't read it; I don't care
what they do in the group.  If, however, it is true that they are more guilty
than typical users of abusing the net (e.g. inappropriate crossposting), then
it is appropriate to do something.  Were I a sysadmin, I'd probably keep the
group but block crossposts involving it.  As with misc.misc, I cannot think 
of any legitimate reason to crosspost to/from talk.bizarre.

If a sysadmin has a user who abuses the net consistently, he has some sort of
obligation to do something about that user, and he should feel no qualms
about cutting off the person's posting privileges until he grows up.

Sites are just users on another level.

Therefore, I think that we can, if we want to, exert pressure on those who
abuse the net.  Inappropriate crossposting is but one abuse.  We should not
keep a group *just* because we are afraid of what its users will do to the net
if we don't.

For the record, I don't see any reason to nuke talk.bizarre.  There are
better ways to deal with the problems that are connected to the group.

Monica Cellio
mjc@cs.cmu.edu