On Fri, 29 Oct 1993 14:18:36 EDT Elliott Parker said:
>On Wed, 27 Oct 1993 21:13:37 PDT john riehl said:
>>without that persons consent.  In the case of a mailing list,
>>there is an implied consent to the listowner, of restricting discussion
>>to the topic and form of the list.
>>
>Could somebody expand on this "implication?"  It might be more
>ammunition when I ask somebody to take his pearls of wisdom someplace
>else.
>    I have some unmoderated, open lists and when things get
>completely outside the topic of the list, I send email to the
>person/persons asking them politely to stop.  By then, probably
>they have already received enough flamemail from other subscribers
>there is no problem.  Problem solved.
 
 
Well, I have enough stuff to do without policing lists. Hence, I instituted
a policy some time ago that the list is the responsiblity of the listowner.
In other words, it's YOUR list, you are responsible for dealing with the
bounced/error messages, and you have the authority to control the content
of the list.  The topic should be described by list headers and/or welcome
information.  The listowner is the final authority of acceptable content.
 
Yes, usually lists are selfcorrecting in people flaming offenders.
Sometimes a kind word from the listowner is all that is needed. One time,
a list got moderated (listowner's request) until people cooled off.
 
I have had to intervene several times.  Several cases were instances of
someone just sending continual streams of junk to lists, and I deleted them,
served them off, and notified their bitnet reps.  There was one case where
the attacks were sexually harrassing of one person to another.  When I asked
the person to stop, this merely got the person to flame me, and harass the
target more.  I began filtering all his messages.  His institution was
notified, his account was shut down, and he was subject to discipline from
his institution.
 
Generally, though, most people are sane and/or somewhat reasonable.
 
In terms of litigation, I do not want to be liable (or my institution),
based on my inactivity (negligence).  Further, to allow some of the
problems to continue is philisophically counter to the purpose of
fostering the communication of ideas, which is the entire point of having
lists.
 
jr
(john riehl)