Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!decvax!bellcore!ulysses!allegra!princeton!caip!lll-crg!styx!xx.lcs.mit.edu!ARMS-D-Request From: ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Moderator) Newsgroups: mod.politics.arms-d Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest V6 #88 Message-ID: <8605230055.AA26807@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: Thu, 22-May-86 19:59:00 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8605230055.AA26807 Posted: Thu May 22 19:59:00 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 24-May-86 01:28:25 EDT Sender: daemon@styx.UUCP Reply-To: ARMS-D@xx.lcs.mit.edu Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 118 Approved: arms-d@xx.lcs.mit.edu Arms-Discussion Digest Thursday, May 22, 1986 7:59PM Volume 6, Issue 88 Today's Topics: A proposed Welcoming message for ARMS-D subscribers ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thursday, 22 May 1986 19:43-EDT From: LIN To: ARMS-D@MIT-XX Re: A welcome message, for your comments... What follows below is a welcome to ARMS-D message that I intend to send to new subscribers. I invite comments on it. I will take your comments into consideration when I revise this message. Proposed ARMS-D welcome Welcome to ARMS-D. This digest is for various and sundry comments and questions on policy issues related to peace, war, national security, weapons, the arms race, and the like. The digest is currently moderated by LIN@MIT-XX, but all administrative requests (e.g., additions to the list) should go to ARMS-D-REQUEST@XX. All substantive contributions should be directed to ARMS-D@MIT-XX.ARPA. They should NOT be sent to ARMS-D-REQUEST, as people sometimes do when they reply to a message. Recent archives live in the file XX:ARCHIVE.CURRENT. MIT-XX supports the ANONYMOUS FTP login protocol: Connect to XX, login as ANONYMOUS, use the password GUEST, and transfer the file. The digest currently goes to about 100 individuals, and 30 redistribution points; it also goes over USENET. To maximize the utility of the discussion group to the ARMS-D community, I ask that you follow the following ground rules. 1. No personal attacks on contributors or outsiders to the list for ANY reason. Contributions with these attacks will be returned for self-censorship. This doesn't mean that you can't say that "Joe Blow is wrong" but please don't call people names. 2. PLEASE put some thought into your responses to other people's comments. Obviously, this can't be enforced or verified, but it would be nice anyway. 3. When you use quotations from other people's messages, don't just insert the whole thing. While line-by-line commentary can be useful, please exercise some care in deciding just what of the original message to include. Also, while it is sometimes useful to have quotations going back and forth for a few iterations, at some point they become too much. At that point, you should no longer include the back and forth. If you like, you can summarize what the substance of what he said. You can also put the material from his message at the END of your message; this saves readers the trouble of reading the whole thing again, but maintains the advantage of allowing the reader to not hunt down an old message that he has probably deleted. MEA CULPA: I have been guilty of excessive quotation perhaps more than anyone else, and I apologize. I try to let this list be self-maintaining; in particular, I want discussion to continue free of censorship. But from time to time, people challenge me by posting procedures for making nerve gas and the like. Here is my working policy on censorship. I believe that the courts are correct when they assert that the right of "free speech" clearly does not include the right to shout "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater. Thus, I explicitly recognize the claim that not absolutely everything should be uncensored. When I state that the digest should be uncensored, I mean it in a "common sense" kind of way. That is, the idea in question is what a "reasonable man" would consider appropriate -- such is the basis of the "infringment" of free speech described above. How do I as moderator draw the line between things that are permissible for the digest and things that are not? For example, since I have no security clearances, I would allow onto the Digest a newspaper article (other than copyright concerns) that contained classified information; how would I know that such information were indeed classified? However, I would have qualms if I were approached by someone about using ARMS-D as a forum for leaking classified information, and I would not do so. Messages that are clearly provocative, and intended to be so, are easy to handle; those I censor without qualms. How do I make that judgment? Contributions that are was ENTIRELY technical and procedural in nature, for example, describing exactly how to make certain toxic compounds, are suspect. If such contributions are not relevant to *any* policy question that I can discern, nor to the resolution of any ARMS-D related question that had previously appeared on the digest, I will omit them. Indeed, it is not clear to me how messages that fit this description would fit with the stated purpose of ARMS-D. In particular, ARMS-D is *NOT* a forum for the discussion of weapons technology PER SE, except insofar as that is relevant to some policy question. Would the description of how to build a rifle or a machine gun be included? Probably, but only because I am too lazy to keep that message off. How about building an H-bomb? I would allow a summary of the Progressive article describing H-bomb construction? Would I have used ARMS-D as a forum for the first release of the Progressive article? NO. Part of the problem is that ARMS-D exists by the sufferance of the powers that govern ARPANET usage. I try to strike a balance between keeping them happy on one hand, and allowing maximal freedom of expression on the other. Sometimes that balance is difficult to maintain. How about an appeals board? I hope we don't need to get that formal, but if people want such a thing, I will try to set one up. ------------------------------ End of Arms-Discussion Digest *****************************