Subject:
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Re: Should AFOL websites keep to themselves?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 12 Apr 2007 06:50:05 GMT
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Viewed:
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3414 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Leonard Hoffman wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Timothy P. Smith wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Eaton wrote:
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Since “murfling” exists only on ONE site that I’m aware of (since Todd made
up the term), this may not be such a hypothetical example
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The word has been adopted by the AFOL community (or some of us anyway) and
is used in a more general sense to refer to the actions of admins or other
personnel of any website. It’s a great word, useful and colorful, and more
descriptive than ‘cancelled’ even if that is technically more correct.
Say somebody posts a link to an eBay auction on BrickLink. If they cancel
their own post, that’s canceling. If a Discussion Mod cancels it, that’s
murfling. There’s not necessarily any judgment about ‘right or wrong’, just
about what’s appropriate for a given site. Links to an auction aren’t the
only thing that will get murfled on BL, for example.
Tim “I’ve been murfled” Smith
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I find it interesting that you describe it this way because murfling was
never meant to be the same as cancelling or deleting a post. The idea is
that questionable posts are visibly separated but still accessible - in
essence, a compromise between the ideal of totally free speech and the
practical need for no cursing on a family site. Somehow murfling got equated
with censorship, which it was never supposed to be (nor is it now).
-Lenny
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While murfling may not equate to cancelling or deleting a post, I find it hard
to comprehend that anyone would not consider it a form of censorship. Though it
has not been used widely on LUGNET, and as a result there are few examples of
actual murfling to examine, I feel that it is distinctly a form of censorship,
albeit a superficially subtle one.
While murfling does not remove posts, it sets them apart, makes them ‘special’
in some way and highlights their unacceptability to some prevailing (or assumed)
standard. To claim that this is not censorship, but mere cautioning, or setting
aside, is, I find, patronising at best.
To my mind, murfling is an insidious Orwellian alternative to ‘cancel’ or
‘delete’ button of the traditional censor. Deleting or cancelling removes the
evidence (or most of it) of the offending post, murfling labels it forever with
something like this post is bad, nice people wouldn’t read it.
But then, I guess euphemisms often help people feel better about things.
Cheers
Richie Dulin
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Should AFOL websites keep to themselves?
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| (...) In the case of a cancelled or deleted post, one can often still see the subject line and the author, but the content is gone forever. The reader can only imagine what horrible nastiness warranted such a scrubbing, and each reader will mentally (...) (18 years ago, 12-Apr-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
| | | Re: Should AFOL websites keep to themselves?
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| (...) I find it amusing, in a sad sort of way, that cries of censorship continue to crop up on Lugnet, which is one of the most unmoderated and self-policing communities on the web (at least that I've frequented). The complaints about censorship (...) (18 years ago, 12-Apr-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Should AFOL websites keep to themselves?
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| (...) I find it interesting that you describe it this way because murfling was never meant to be the same as cancelling or deleting a post. The idea is that questionable posts are visibly separated but still accessible - in essence, a compromise (...) (18 years ago, 12-Apr-07, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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