Xref: utzoo news.groups:16529 rec.arts.movies:28590
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!think!mintaka!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!thakur
From: thakur@athena.mit.edu (Manavendra K. Thakur)
Newsgroups: news.groups,rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: rec.arts.cinema: moderated or not?
Message-ID: <1990Jan18.003946.9362@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 90 00:39:46 GMT
References: <10954@attctc.Dallas.TX.US> <3364@cbnewsj.ATT.COM> <5292@buengc.BU.EDU>
Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
Reply-To: thakur@eddie.mit.edu (Manavendra K. Thakur)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Lines: 56

In article <5292@buengc.BU.EDU> bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
[...]
>
>    [*](e.g., whether the moderator should actually
>    do something so obnoxious as to impose his own
>    uncertain grammatical and lexicographical know-
>    ledge on postings;

Let me try to remove some of this "uncertainty."  Your posting was
perfectly readable and clear and made substantive points (although I
disagree with your conclusions).  Here is the point: I'm not asking
for anything more than that.

Now, just how much time did it take you to write up your posting?
Fifteen minutes?  A half-hour?  An hour, tops?  Whatever it took, it's
clear that you had something serious to say and you said it in a way
that I could perfectly understand.

THAT IS ALL I'M ASKING FOR WHEN IT COMES TO REC.ARTS.CINEMA POSTINGS!

Is that too much to ask?  I don't plan to nitpick a proposed article
to death.  I don't have *time* to nitpick an article to death.

>     would you bounce a message
>    posted by Milos Forman simply because he can't
>    keep straight "their", "there", and "their"!?

Absolutely not!  Where in the world did you get the idea that I would
bounce it?  Just how long do you think Milos Forman would continue to
submit articles if they kept getting rejected solely because of
grammatical mistakes?  Just how stupid do you think I am?

The far more intelligent thing to do would be to take him aside, point
out the mistakes, and ask him to revise it.  After all, the article
will be posted under his name, and someone of his stature will look
mighty foolish if he repeatedly keeps on making these kinds of
mistakes.

And as I've said several times already, I *know* what it's like to
have an article butchered by an uncaring/unfeeling/fascist editor.
Several of my articles for the MIT newspaper have been hacked up in
this fashion, and I have absolutely no intention of perpetuating the
practice to rec.arts.cinema.  I am NOT that type of person.  Ok?

I hope this clears up any misconceptions you might have had about how
I would go about moderating the newsgroup.  You may still not think
moderation is a good idea, but at least you can understand that if
your posting had been submitted to rec.arts.cinema I probably would
not have changed a thing.

So what's the fuss all about?

					Manavendra K. Thakur
					thakur@eddie.mit.edu
					thakur@cfa.harvard.edu
					...!harvard!zerkalo.harvard.edu!thakur