From the moderator: My decision about Joe Dees

From: Bruce Edmonds (b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 22 Dec 2003 - 13:11:29 GMT

  • Next message: Virginia Bowen: "RE: From the moderator: My decision about Joe Dees"

    OK, I have consulted. Basically the result was that although Joe Dees
    (and others but he is the principle problem) put some people off the list by irrelevant and copious posts, a few wanted to read what he writes.

    I have had a (rather frustrating) correspondance with Joe. He indicates that he thinks campaigning against certain "memes" (as he puts it) is overridingly important, and does not understand why such a campaign may be inappropriate on *this* list. Thus I have come to the view that he is unlikely to change in the long term. He is certain that he is right!

    On the other hand, I am deeply antagonistic to censorship/moderation.

    Thus what I will do is the following: I will create a sub-list of such
    "offenders", the result of which will be that although their posts will continue to be archived on the web, they will not be distributed in emails. This way people who want to read him can by looking up his posts, but they will not fill up people's mailboxes. (Ideally there would be software so that *each* participant of the list could decided whether to exclude any particular person's posts, so that all could
    'select out' as they wanted, but I do not know of such software). This
    'layer' of filtering will be in place sometime early in the new year.

    I think this is the minimum intervention whilst solving this problem - I do not like people who are genuinely interested in memetics being driven away by a few who do not adhere to the academic norms of the list.

    (PS. It will continue to be the case that personally offensive or abusive posters will simply be excluded, as well as any illegal stuff - i.e. obscene or libellous).

    Regards.

    -------------------------------------------------- Bruce Edmonds, Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University, Aytoun Bldg., Aytoun St., Manchester, M1 3GH. UK. Tel: +44 161 247 6479 Fax: +44 161 247 6802 Email: bruce@cfpm.org Web: bruce.edmonds.name

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