Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wuarchive!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!milton!cyberoid
From: cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: The Moderator Who Doesn't Give A Shit
Message-ID: <16588@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 17 Feb 91 08:07:02 GMT
References: <1991Feb11.185846.20778@lavaca.uh.edu> <1991Feb11.212313.8461@uncecs.edu> <1991Feb13.031035.27179@looking.on.ca>
Organization: Human Interface Technology Lab, Univ. of Wash., Seattle
Lines: 22


Sorry to have to remark on this topic again, but forgetting completely
Pat's own tendencies to do one thing or another, when one operates a
newsgroup which is carried by sites everywhere, it assumes the form of
a virtual monopoly.  Getting a newsgroup organized is no small thing
(just as building a successful newspaper or newsletter, hardcopy or
online, is no small thing):  "capital" (time, if not money), distribution
links, assistants, routers...all of these things tend to defeat most
attempts at setting up "competing" newsgroups.  (As to distribution,
most site administrators do not want to chew up valuable memory with
apparently redundant newsgroups, even if they have different points of
view.)  So, running a newsgroup is something of a public trust.  One
trifles with this trust at one's own expense, but also at the expense
of participants who believe they deserve evenhandedness in the discussion
of crucial issues -- and what could be more crucial these days than
telecommunications issues?

Rhetoric about freedom of the press would be more compelling if it
admitted even slight misgivings about how that freedom has been exercised
in too many cases.

Bob Jacobson