Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!bloom-beacon!shelby!decwrl!shlump.nac.dec.com!being!mcculley From: mcculley@alien.enet.dec.com Newsgroups: alt.sex.bondage Subject: Keep the anonymous posting service Message-ID: <7493@shlump.nac.dec.com> Date: 16 Jan 90 02:32:11 GMT Sender: newsdaemon@shlump.nac.dec.com Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Lines: 76 Heck, if anything right now I'd vote for keeping the anonymous posts and getting rid of some of the regulars! That lovely exchange amongst Mr. Allen and SeebS and Clay did nothing to improve the S/N ratio.... A couple of points that haven't yet been made about why some folks might prefer anonymity: All of us are not in the education world, so the mention of "tenure" interprets differently. In the world of private industry, you hold tenure at your employer's pleasure. Laws to protect against arbitrary firings just raise the hurdles (in some cases not even that). And even if you're not fired, if you get poor reviews your career advancement is shot. Why should some ingrown collection of newsgroup regulars decide they have the power to make others chose between protecting their careers and the risk of openly posting to this group? What right does SeebS have to judge the need of others for anonymity? (Sorry to single you out, SeebS, but I think I recall you as making some such statement, among many others!) On the issue of rights to anonymity, here's one for you. I *can* arrange to post anonymously if I want ("we have the technology..." is a local catchphrase). It's not a right, it's a fact of life for at least some folks. The question is whether there's a right for everyone to have equal access, be it to anonymous posting or to the newsgroup in general. If there's a right to equal access, it follows that anonymous posting is justified. Back to my point about the difference between private industry and the academic world, there's another factor that's more important to those of us who must function in the business world. It's the risk that knowledge of sexual details will distract from what should be the matters at hand. As a rhetorical question, does anyone think that either Clay, as he enjoyed the sight of those beads of sweat, or the dean, who was sweating them, was really concentrating on the reason for that particular meeting? As one who is employed in an industry currently not enjoying the best of times and faced with significant overseas competition, I do not want any of my co-workers, managers, or customers distracted by their feelings about my personal life. Thus I will discuss impersonal issues such as this one openly, and I reserve the right to post anonymously when things get too personal. For what it's worth, I speak from experience here. I probably should be posting this part anonymously because it refers to a corporate hot potato, but since that has nothing to do with my own personal sexuality, the hell with it. Some years ago, our internal network started to be populated with a nifty tool for electronic conferencing that was quickly adopted for non-work-related topics. One of the resulting notesfiles was named SEXCETERA, and I was an active participant. It was a rather shortlived forum however, because some of the readership misused material outside the forum to harass a co-worker. The network police swooped down to impound the file (because there were legal issues involved due to the harassment). Naturally, the system management booted it off their machine, and no one else in their right mind would house such a controversial discussion group on their system. Meanwhile, unrelated to all that fun and games, I had been fairly open about my own sexual past being somewhat different from accepted social norms. I know for a fact that this impaired my ability to do my job, because of the reaction it elicited from (at least one particular) co-worker(s). I'm still here, but my reviews, my income, and my contribution to our organization all suffered. My need for anonymity (in some situations) is based on that firsthand experience. I don't need any snot-nosed students or ivory-tower academicians or network know-it-alls trying to tell me I don't have such a need, I'VE BEEN THERE! Anyone who hasn't isn't qualified to comment, anyone who has still isn't qualified to tell me what tradeoffs I should make. If the goal of this group is to provide a broad public forum then keep the anonymous posting service to broaden the contributing membership as much as possible. If the goal is to gratify some select group with postings to their private standards, why don't they just go off and form a closed circle-jerk group to trade their holier-than-thou insults while they let the rest of us go on enjoying this public group? Thanks, John, and keep the ptASB going! - Bruce ps - I'd feel guilty about rambling on so long if I didn't know this is a small bit compared to the amount of network bandwidth already wasted on this topic. Let's get back to SEX!