Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!lethe!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!world!eff!mnemonic
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: The Moderator Who Doesn't Give A Shit
Message-ID: <1991Feb13.153741.8347@eff.org>
Date: 13 Feb 91 15:37:41 GMT
References: <1991Feb11.185846.20778@lavaca.uh.edu> <1991Feb11.212313.8461@uncecs.edu> <1991Feb13.031035.27179@looking.on.ca>
Organization: The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Lines: 32

In article <1991Feb13.031035.27179@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:
>
>The great new feature of electronic media -- the truly new thing which
>inspires the creation of something like the EFF -- is the removal of the
>distinction between small press and large press.   Freedom of the press has
>always gone only to those who own the press.   But now any person with
>a thousand dollars to spare can have an electronic press.   We should revel
>in this rather than reviling those who don't operate their's to our taste.

I agree with this, but I hasten to add that "press" is only one
of the metaphors we are trying to bring to the frontier. "Forum" is
another.

Publications are necessarily very top-down in their organization and
content, but it kills a forum when a forum is conducted that way.

The Prodigy controversy illustrates what happens when a service is
marketed as a forum but seeks to maintain its prerogatives as a
publication. The result is a serious mismatch of expectations.

 

--Mike




-- 
Mike Godwin, (617) 864-0665 | "That information, as I have repeated infinitely
mnemonic@eff.org            |  to myself, is classified ... though the keeping
Electronic Frontier         |  of secrets ... seems less meaningful to me now."
Foundation                  |                   --Major Garland Briggs