On Sun, 17 Nov 2002, rex wrote:
> Peter R. objected to such editing. First, it's your list and
> subscribers have no right of free speech there, just as they
> don't when they write letters to the editor of a newspaper;

It is not "just as" LTEs. It's not "just as" anything except
what it is --an emailing list. The policy can be set to whatever
the list owner wishes. The subscribers can participate or not,
according to those wishes as they please.

It is also not an issue of "free speech", and I never suggested
it was. It is, simply enough, an issue of courtesy, and an issue
of proper attribution, and an issue of not risking
misrepresenting the words or intent of the author. The list
owner takes on serious responsibility when he attempts to
interpret and represent someone else's content, style, emphasis,
etc. I suggest that this attempt is prone to failure, and that
the better approach is to work directly with the author to
resolve the issues (or else to completely ignore and discard the
submission).

If you have no concern about any of these issues, then indeed
feel free to operate your list under whatever other principles
of consideration, respect, and concern that you wish. Your
subscribers might be told of your particular principles so they
can better decide whether to participate.

> second, many people do not know the rules of netiquette
> (RFC1855). This results in excessive quoting, top posting,
> failure to choose an appropriate list topic (if the list uses
> topic keywords), etc. Correcting such posts by stripping
> excessive quotes, etc, makes the list easier to read without
> changing the content of what the author wrote.

If the subscribers could only be sure that no meaning or
intention was lost in the efforts by the editor, perhaps this
could be seen as nothing more than free labor. Why should the
list editor get involved in that business if it's not necessary?

A list owner could perform this service in behalf of the author,
and not attribute the editorializing properly to himself as
editor (recall that I said an editor could edit and post IF he
properly attributed the content as edited to himself, giving
full and accurate acknoweldgements for ideas of the original
author as appropriate), and the author might even assume that
this is a fine "service" provided by the list's "editor" --"let
him do more of the same!". Or, the list owner can refuse to post
the item unless the author makes the effort to remedy the
situation according to _coherently articulated_ criteria
provided by the list's owner (to the author; and to all
subscribers in the WELCOME message for example). Further, as you
say...

> After burning out from the labor involved in editing posts
....