Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!ghoti+ From: ghoti+@andrew.cmu.edu (Adam Stoller) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Response to abusive email. Message-ID: Date: Mon, 25-May-87 15:32:00 EDT Article-I.D.: andrew.kUi9kky00jaFxjg0io Posted: Mon May 25 15:32:00 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 6-Jun-87 12:48:23 EDT Organization: Carnegie Mellon University Lines: 68 In-Reply-To: <4593@utah-cs.UUCP> [This is from the view of an "outsider" - sorry about the length] It has been intersting to see all this flaming - and is further intersting due to the recent-ness (pardon the lack of pure gramatical correctness) of the Foothead incident (for those of you in soc.women - this was another case of someone allegedly doing something and getting their rights revoked - I pass no judgement on whether or not the actions were warranted). It seems to me, that a preventive solution to this in the future would be to have a standardized form that people requesting accounts on various systems would have to complete before receiving their account (this could be email-ed, but might be more legal as a signed piece of US Mail). In the form, the requestee would be informed of the various rules and regulations that this particular site feels should be obeyed, and thus laying down the conditions under which someones account would be revoked. To some degree, sysops could even send these forms to current users, so that there wouldn't be problems of this sort creeping up again from someone who has had an account prior to the initiation of such a program. The form should obviously explain both the reasons for why an account would be revoked and the process under which these reasons would be considered justified (i.e. personal confrontation with the alledged abuser, prior to the revoking) - After all this is the "innnocent until proven guilty" America (isn't it? :-) My reason for suggesting this comes partially from practicallity and partically from the way our system is run. Being both an academic site and an arpanet site - we have guidelines from both the University and DARPA about what is considered proper behavior, and what to do when someone abuses their privelages. So far, we haven't had too many problems - once someone posted someone else's credit card numbers, but the incident was contained and the post removed from the system as soon as it was noticed. (I was not directly involved with the incident, so I don't know what happened to the user's account who posted the note) As far as Mark Smith goes, I seriously feel that the issue at hand has been burried under a tremendous amount of useless flaming - this has gone on so long, that I am not sure I even remember what brought the entire issue to light. Whether or not Mark is male or female did not (as I recall) have much bearing in the original perdicament, and merely came about in subsequent followups. In most cases, posts on the net (perhaps excluding such groups as soc.women - I don't know, I don't read it) do not bother to make any reference whatsoever to the gender of the post-ers - which I think is perfectly fine. The only place where it might get confusing is when someone bothered to refer back to someones post and say "he said..." or "she said..." If such a post had occured in response to one of Mark's posts (prior to all this hoo hah), it would have been up to Mark to correct the person, if Mark felt it was warranted to do so (although frankly, I think that would tend to lead us into what we are currently thrashing through, and that it would be better off left unsaid, as it probably wouldn't have been critical to the original post) Anyway, sorry for this long-winded post regarding this long-long-winded debate, but I felt that everyone has gotten so far off track that it was likely never to end. (Of course I could be wrong ;-) -fish **************** Disclaimer: The above only barely reflects my own opinion, and should certainly not be considered as reflecting any of my employers opinions....I'll let them post for themselves if they want to. ---------------- Earth, a great place to visit, but only worth staying ifyou can get along with the rest of the visitors. ****************