[DEBATE] : Re: Debate management poll: apathy & too close to call

[Dave Hollis]

The answer is simple: do nothing. 

I run a website with pretty much open posting. The site hosts projects
made up of rank-and-file groups that network within and between
workplaces. Usually projects come into being when redundancies are being
fought.

Postings are deleted (or censored) when someone libels someone else
(happens occasionally) or postings are openly facist/racist or sexist.
In the case of libel what is said is often true but the law makes the
domain owner and/or the person who is named on the site as being legally
responsible for its content (an individual without anything to impound)
legally responsible. And that is expensive.

We also have two agent provocateurs, at least one is almost certainly
from the authorities. In this case we eventually gave up deleting his
postings. He always turns up when struggles hot up and he makes a
regular nuisance of himself. Instead of deleting his postings we have
moved them into a new project with a wiki in which we document his
interventions. His postings have gone down considerably since then.

In the case of a mailing list, made up of academics, trade-unionists and
activists of all sorts, the problems are not as large or as dangerous as
on an open web site. 

The problem boils down to definitions of what is and is not acceptable
and whether one can get consensus on them and on who decides on all
those cases which are borderline. Who has the power to decide? And who
controls this power and how? In the case of the aforementioned website
blatant racism, sexism and libel are easy. The rest is rather difficult.
On the website the projects themselves have to decide and to do so very
quickly.

Playing judge, jury and executioner is not easy. In a court of law the
prosecuted has a right to his/her own defence and usually the right of
appeal. They may be "bürgerliche" (bourgeois) standards, but the praxis
of the left often falls short of even this.

To come to the point: everyone of us has a delete button that usually
works in every mail program. It even works in my Linux mailer. Just use
it. For those who find this mail offensive, please do so. I will neither
know nor be offended. 

Now I can go back to lurking.

Regards, 

Dave

On Fri, 2006-05-26 at 18:58 +0200, Caroline O'Reilly wrote:
> sounds like the ayes have it then (so to speak)
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Deborah Ewing" <deb at i-mediate.co.za>
> To: "debate: SA discussion list " <debate at lists.kabissa.org>
> Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 10:34 AM
> Subject: [DEBATE] : Re: Debate management poll: apathy & too close to call
> 
> 
> Like Caroline's, my a) vote (12 May, Patrick) does not seem to be
> reflected, assuming I am a W SA F
> 
> 
> On May 26, 2006, at 8:48 AM, Charlene Smith wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for this Patrick.  It seems really wierd to break down votes
> > according to race, gender, nationality - what does it matter?  Bit
> > apartheid era this.
> >
> > I think that in any society the majority of people don't vote.  Let's
> > go with the majority who voted and that would give us "C".
> >
> > Charlene
> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Bond" <pbond at mail.ngo.za>
> > To: "debate: SA discussion list" <debate at lists.kabissa.org>
> > Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 8:39 AM
> > Subject: [DEBATE] : Debate management poll: apathy & too close to call
> >
> >
> > Comrades, what do you think?
> >
> > Debate’s membership is currently 444. Since early May we’ve had a
> > half-dozen new subscribers (welcome you lurkers and I apologise that
> > you
> > are subject to immediate soul-searching with a low degree of content).
> > We had one unsub but a few days later that person resubbed (thanks).
> >
> > To five of you who have sounded rather shrill about the debate list’s
> > ‘demise’ or imminent censorship – ok, your names are Dominic, Ebrahim,
> > Peter, Tony and Stefan – I think we will all collectively e-hold your
> > hands and tell you to chill out and rejoin the community after you have
> > taken a deep breath.
> >
> > Between 12-21 May, only ten people sent me their votes (although I
> > briefly had an Outlook Express crash so it's possible another one or
> > two
> > came in I didn't reconstruct well). That's really not enough of a
> > sample, is it. And there's no clear trends that I can discern in the
> > vote, below.
> >
> > Again, your choices were:
> > > a) the status quo (very libertarian);
> > > b) leave it to moderator discretion, but with an urging for more
> > explicit interventions and occasional time-out periods or even
> > bannings;
> > > c) adopt the code of desired behaviour that Charlene suggested,
> > below;
> > > d) adopt a different code (suggestions welcome).
> >
> > Here’s the breakdown of the votes according to race, nationality (e =
> > expat) and gender.
> >
> > a)
> > W SA M
> > B SA M
> > W E M
> >
> > b)
> > W E M
> > W E F
> > B SA M
> >
> > c)
> > W E M
> > W E M
> > W SA F
> > W SA F
> >
> > So we have 434 people voting not to vote; and the ten who voted are
> > nearly evenly split.
> >
> > What do we do now??
> >
> > Ciao,
> > P.
> >
> > (PS, to be frank I'm an 'A' voter largely because I'm bogged down in
> > too
> > many other things to do anything much more than the status quo - so my
> > request once again is if anyone wants to take the 'ownership' of the
> > debate list and all that it entails, do contact me, thanks.)
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
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> 
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