Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!nj@ernie.Berkeley.EDU
From: nj@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Narciso Jaramillo)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Restricting posting privileges
Message-ID: <21509@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 11 Mar 89 19:56:55 GMT
References: <125.24183820@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: nj@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Narciso Jaramillo)
Lines: 56

In article <21422@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> I wrote:

> >I think the controversy will eventually boil down to whether people
> >feel USENET should be a large, open forum, or a more restricted,
> >"professional" network.  The latter opinion would lead to such
> >questions as whether large commercial sites (e.g. Portal) and large
> >BBS networks (e.g. FidoNet) should be denied USENET feeds, in view of
> >the large number of young and nonprofessional posters from those
> >sites.              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) replies:

>Hold it.  Young != Nonprofessional.

Precisely.  I meant set union, not set intersection--that is, young posters
and nonprofessional posters, not "young and nonprofessional" posters.

>I'm 13; should I be banned from the net?

No.  I was NOT advocating an opinion; I was pointing out that the
opinion that Mr Baird holds (an opinion i do not agree with) would
lead to such questions.  I had thought that my first paragraph was
sufficiently clear in stating that I did NOT feel such a restriction
was appropriate.  For the record, I am both young (17) and
unprofessional (in the sense given below).

The point I should have made explicitly (which I assumed
most people would themselves deduce) is that, since USENET has grown
to the size it has, and sites like uunet are willing to sell feeds to
any other responsibly-maintained site, "professional" or not, it is
highly unlikely that FidoNet or Portal will be cut off, despite the
number of people who may want to restrict USENET to professional
sites.  (Once again, in case anyone missed it, I am NOT one of those
people.)

>Since when does Fidonet have a "large number of young and nonprofessional
>posters" on it?

I am using "professional" to mean "engaged in a professional,
computer-oriented occupation."  I assumed this was the sense in which
Mr Baird meant it.  On the BBSes I used to frequent regularly, Fido or
not, the majority of the population was composed of students or
people not employed in a computer profession.

>Don't make sweeping generalizations; more likely than not, you'll be wrong
>about at least one member of the group.

Please, people, _read for content_ before flaming someone; s/he might
just be agreeing with you.


--
Narciso Jaramillo                                     nj@ernie.Berkeley.EDU
Graduate Student                                        ...!ucbvax!ernie!nj
Computer Science Division
University of California at Berkeley