Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!apple!bbn!gatech!prism!capone!scott From: scott@capone.gatech.edu (Scott Holt) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: posting privileges Keywords: knowledge base, maturity, free speech, discrimination Message-ID: <331@hydra.gatech.EDU> Date: 10 Mar 89 19:33:43 GMT References: <7502@pyr.gatech.EDU> <9689@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <9691@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <744@crlabs.CRLABS.COM> Sender: news@prism.gatech.EDU Reply-To: scott@capone.gatech.edu (Scott Holt) Distribution: usa Organization: What? Me Organized? Lines: 127 In article <744@crlabs.CRLABS.COM> cwiener@crlabs.CRLABS.COM (Chris Wiener) writes: >Very true. Maybe the administrator who posted the initial article was denied >access when he was an "immature undergrad". Just because someone doesn't have >a degree yet or because of their age, is no reason to blindly restrict their >access to a public forum designed to educate. This sort of smacks of the >recent flap over "The Satanic Verses". Khomeni (sp.?) has probably made a >decision without even reading the book. It seems that the GATECH admin hasn't >even given the undergrads a chance to prove their maturity (or lack of). > >I hope that other college administrators will be more reasonable that GATECH >seems to be. Lets get something straight...Gus is not an administrator, he has very little to do with the decision of how to allow access to USENET at this institute. Gus is a faculty member in the School of Information and Computer Science (ICS). Please don't confuse his opinions with those of the Computing Services organization which is responsible for making this decision. Now, some background. Starting this quarter, the Office of Computing Services (OCS) began issuing accounts on UNIX based systems to all students. Since these systems provide access to USENET news, we are faced with the problem of managing access to it. We have just started to formulate plans and policies for this, but from what I know of the matter, they won't be as drastic as what Gus proposes (this is, of course, my opinion). There will be restrictions, however. We will not just grant full and unrestrained access to the USENET. There are several reasons for this: 1) Over the past few years we have operated local news services on several of our systems (which all students have access to). Without exception, when student access has been granted to one of the groups within the systems, abuse and misuse has occurred. Thus, the student user community has already proven its potential for abuse and misuse. For example, several committees have recently been formed to study various aspects of a proposed academic reorganization. A group on one of our local systems was set up to promote discussions concerning this topic. Access was given to students because the faculty and administrators involved in the reorganization value their opinions. There have been a large number of appropriate and well written articles from students on this group, but about 1 in 10 is some bogus message...sometimes just random characters, sometimes obscene messages. 2) Institutions such as ours have an obligation to assure that standards of good taste are followed in all the articles that get posted from this site. Some might even argue that this applies to articles we feed from other sites. Because we provide access to the services, we carry part of the legal liability for the actions of our users. If a user here were to post slanderous statements, we would be just as open to legal action as the poster. 3) I think just about everyone will agree that the signal to noise ratio on the net has increased over the last several years. We feel that all system administrators have an obligation to the rest of the USENET community to prevent this. 4) New users account for a large portion of the noise on the the USENET. Most of us accept this quite well and the new users learn the ropes pretty fast...what we are assuming though, is that the user community grows at a moderate pace. We accept the idiocy of some new users because at any one time, there are not so many of them that using the net becomes a pain...when you add 15000 potential users at one time, you can throw that acceptance out the door. When things like this get out of hand (and they have, portal is a good example), the people who take the heat are the sytem administrators. We are not in a position to deal with this so if we wish to provide USENET access to 15000 users at one time, we better have some idiot prevention measures in place. Please don't get me wrong, the large majority of our 15000 users are responsible people and will exercise care and courtesy when using USNET. But, if just .5% neglect to use such courtesy, we are in for a fire storm of flames. Right now the situation here is that students do not have posting privileges to non-local groups. Persons who have access are those on the support staff and a number of people who previously had access to an older system with USENET news (a system that wasn't accessible by all students). This situation is unacceptable to almost everyone here. It is not going to change until we develop some policies for dealing with the huge volume of potential users...blanket access is not going to work nor is blanket denial. I want USENET news to become an effective resource for faculty, staff and students. The volume of useful information is beyond the imagination of most of them...almost everyone stands to benefit from having access. I have seen too many cases where local groups are killed because inconsiderate or uninformed users overrun the group. I believe that is the fate of USENET if organizations providing access to large groups do not take measures to assure that their users are informed and aware of the proper use of this facility. These precautions must go beyond simply handing out copies of the Net Etiquette guide and slapping the wrist of occasional offenders. > >I'd like to hear what Spaf has to say about the policy at Purdue. So would I...Spaf was one of the driving forces behind getting USENET established on this campus. >-- >Christopher Wiener N2CR CR Labs, Cliffside Park, NJ >DOMAIN: cwiener@CRLABS.COM UCCP: ..!killer!crlabs!cwiener Disclaimer: I work for the Computing Services organization here...I do not formulate their policies or announce them to the public unless told to do so...I have not been told to do so, thus you may assume that the above remarks are my own opinion. Scott Holt, Systems Analyst Internet: scott@prism.gatech.edu Georgia Tech BITNET: CCUSESH@GITNVE2 Office of Computing Services Atlanta, Ga 30332-0275