Re: Sensoring and the banning of free speech...

It has been said been our Moderator:

Hi All,

Since I was a bit concerned about the direction the discussion was
taking last night, I put the list into "moderation" mode before I
went to sleep. That means that no post gets distributed without me
approving it first. And now that I see what messages were posted
overnight, I'm glad I did that. I rejected 9 of the 14 messages sent
overnight. These messages continued a discussion that I think (from
past experience) would have easily escalated into a nasty, hateful
exchange, or were just simply off-topic. I apologize to those of you
who were concerned that the list was broken, and I especially
apologize to Christian, who retyped all of his answers to the
Mindbender quiz after thinking the first e-mail was lost!!! I didn't
announce the moderation ahead of time because I didn't want anyone to
think that I was overreacting, but now I see that I wasn't.

This list will continue in moderation mode until it appears safe to
go back to normal. So there will be delays between when you post
something and when it appears. Also, if you try to post something
off-topic, please be aware that I probably won't approve it.

--
Marc Martin, [hidden email]

<<<< Dear Marc,

I understand that there might be topics that you don't accept or want on the
list, but I certainly didn't expect to be sensored like this. What happened
to free speech? Discussing slash isn't off-topic. Off-toic, as I understand
it, is if I discuss a subject which has nothing to do with UFO. I know for a
fact that Mr Gerry Anderson would not agree with you sensoring your List
members, he's fosught all his life against people who tried to sensor his
work and ideas. You're not doing him, or us, any favours by doing this.

I've been spending time writing maisl which won't get posted. It would've
been more fair if you'd written to the individuals concerned and told them
their topics weren't wanted. And what's wrong with the delete button? If
people don't want to read something they don't have to.

I'd like to discuss this with you further off-List, if you'd be willing to.
It would be a shame to discover this List was the wrong one for me. So far
I've found the people on the List to be a great bunch of people, and the
discussions interesting, and so far it's been a tribute to Mr Anderson. I'm
afraidf I don't understand what you're trying to do here.

.....Karen

>I understand that there might be topics that you don't accept or want on the
>list, but I certainly didn't expect to be sensored like this. What happened
>to free speech?

Hmmm, I see that I turned off the moderation mode too quickly... :-)

Karen, you're new here. You haven't seen the terrible things that
happen when people start arguing about slash, religion, politics,
etc.... it quickly deteriorates into personal attacks, people
unsubscribing, and the remaining people having a bad feeling about a
list which is supposed to be about a TV show that they are a fan of,
not about people viciously attacking each other.

Since I'm the owner of this list, I have to decide what can and
cannot be discussed on this list. It's not a matter of free speech
-- if you'd like to discuss UFO slash, then I suggest that you start
your own mailing list and discuss it there. I'll be happy to even
help you advertise it, but I'm not going to run a mailing list that
regularly breaks out in personal attacks.

Back to moderation mode... <sigh>

--
Marc Martin, [hidden email]