Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!topaz.rutgers.edu!brandx.rutgers.edu!webber
From: webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Pseudonymous Postings
Message-ID: <821@brandx.rutgers.edu>
Date: 13 Feb 88 02:03:56 GMT
References: <2929@dasys1.UUCP> <1803@mind.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 33

In article <1803@mind.UUCP>, harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes:
> ...
> Which makes the net look like a global graffiti board instead of a
> responsible medium of communication. The net's immunity to laws intended
> to protect people and their careers and lives from defamation and libel
> doesn't make it a freer, more objective forum. Words CAN do damage, and

It most certainly makes if freer.  As to objectivity, probably it
does, but it depends on your interpretation of objectivity.

> cloak of pseudonymy. But, unfortunately, I am told that this is not a
> problem that net administrators could fix even if they wanted to:

Most certainly wrong.  It is not difficult to fix.  Just no one thinks
the fix is worth the price (an entirely separate matter).

> ... Too bad. It's another factor slowing the progress of
> electronic networks toward realizing their enormous potential in
> advancing scholarly communication and the evolution of ideas.

Actually not.  What is slowing the use of the networks are people's wish
to maintain certain types of informational properties, including everything
from program sources to technical reports to news paper databases to 
dictionaries.  In some of the news groups, you find people who are much
more interested in seeing that information gets distributed than in
maintaining control over the information and getting credit for it and
lots of interesting information flows.  Now electronic networks don't
fit in well with copyrighted journal publications, but that is becoming
less and less significant to scholarly communication (and certainly to
the evolution of ideas) as hardcopy journals are becoming less and less
useful.

----- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)