Subject:
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Re: Thoughts on Community & Censorship (Was: Re: Brickshelf censorship policy rules.....)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 5 Sep 2002 15:22:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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426 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richie Dulin writes:
> In lugnet.general, John P. Henderson writes:
> [snip]
> > Regarding the recent debates about censorship, content, etc., I think there
> > are greater, more fundamental issues that must first be discussed. For one,
> > we must decide how we as a *community* want to be.
>
> I disagree strongly here. It is what it is. The is no collective decision
> making about how we 'want to be' - it will be what individuals make it.
"Want it to be" or "Make it be", I think this may be semantics. Either way,
my point is that this is an established (yet evolving) community that
currently accepts among its members both people who may dislike certain
content and those who may appreciate it. That could be good or it could be
bad, but unless the community works to change it, that is how it is.
> > Perhaps sites like
> > Lugnet, Brickshelf, rtl, etc. are privately operated, perhaps the various
> > LUGs have charters and rules, but the community that uses them is a separate
> > entity that is essentially self-created.
>
> The community may be a seperate entity, but that is largely irrelevent.
> LUGNET and Brickshelf are privately owned and the owners set down the rules.
> They may listen to input, but in the end it's their money/time/future.
>
> (The community may always move on to somewhere else... after all, it made
> the step from rtl to LUGNET some time ago).
Yes indeed. The forums where the community meets are privately owned. But
they are established by members of the community for the community, with
little or no aim for profit. We are fortunate that our community is large
enough that some of our members have the resources to establish forums like
Lugnet, Brickshelf, etc. And we collectively accept the exchange of use of
service for their administration and moderation. But if we collectively
don't find the service to meet the community's needs, someone is bound to
open a new forum. Thus, the administrators try (within their own reason) to
keep things open and free for all of us, sometimes for the better, sometimes
for the worse. Except where legal issues are a concern, I think the
offerings of the administrators are quite diplomatic. If they failed to
make us happy, we'd go elsewhere. Ergo, as I said above, the point is that
the community collectively has a strong impact on how these forums operate
and what content is accepted. I trust our admins to be fair and to
establish rules that allow for legal issues and even to dictate what the
forum is for. But I would not go so far to say that we as a community are
bound by the whims of the admins. Don't forget, I'm not talking about just
one forum or website here; I am talking about all of us collectively,
wherever we meet.
> [big snip]
>
> > Teach them the difference between playfully sneaking
> > around the woods versus actually watching your friends getting killed. If
> > you just say "don’t touch guns" guess what might happen when they reach the
> > rebellious or curious stages of their lives? Bang. Bang.
>
> A nice thought.... but I don't recall any incident of someone without a gun
> using backround/parent reaching a 'rebellious or curious' stage in their
> life and suddenly somehow getting hold of a firearm and going on a shooting
> rampage.
>
> I could be wrong, though... do you have a specific example?
I confess I have no research on this issue. I have heard of studies where
otherwise good kids have been given lessons on how bad guns are and if they
find one they should tell an adult, but then when secretly tested they would
not always do so. Again, I can't offer proof beyond that hearsay. But what
I was trying to say on this issue was that there is equally no proof that
playing with *toy* guns or enjoying *pretend* violence makes a child grow up
into a dangerous adult. All of the children who grew up in my home
neighborhood played with toy guns, but we all knew it was a game. Today,
we're all still alive, and none of us are murderers. I know of only one of
the children from that neighborhood who owns a real gun as an adult (to
hunt). A few others have since graduated from Havard and Yale and are
becoming influencial citizens. And at least two others are now happily
married with good kids of their own. I can't prove my previous statement
about the rebellious stage, but I can sure give examples that disprove the
current public attitude that playing with toy guns leads to violent kids.
-H.
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