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 13:14:43 GMT
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Viewed:
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3486 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Chris Phillips wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richie Dulin wrote:
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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.
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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 fill in their own worst imagining.
In the case of murfling (at least as practiced here on LUGNET) the original
words are still available for all to see. While this may qualify as a sort
of editorial comment by the admins, I wouldn’t quite call it “Orwellian.”
Orwell would’ve had the admins re-writing history (or posts) to make it
appear that the past was always a happy, shiny place.
If a post gets murfled, the author still has the option of whether or not to
request cancellation. This additional degree of freedom absolutely proves
that murfling is not as heavy-handed as true censorship. I see murfling more
like highlighting posts - an editorial statement which categorizes the
content. While you may debate whether this meets the strict definition of
“censorship”, it seems kind of silly to characterize murfling as some sort of
Big Brother activity.
The fact that some government drone in a dark cubicle underneath Virginia is
reading this post to screen for some fuzzy definition of “unpatriotic
activities” is Big Brother. Admins flagging the most extreme violations of
the TOS on a web site doesn’t even come close.
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Given the conext of its use and the lack of mention of ‘Big Brother’ I would
assume that Richie is using Orwellian to refer to doublespeak. In this case
murfling is Orwellian. It’s a ‘nice’ way of saying censored.
Tim
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Should AFOL websites keep to themselves?
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| (...) Nice try, but you might want to actually read Orwell before you start using him to back you up. Doublespeak does not refer to the simple use of euphamism. To qualify as doublespeak, a phrase must use words in a disingenuous way to imply their (...) (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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| (...) 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)
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