Re: moderation [was: rampant offtopic and offensive posts to debian-user]

["M. Fioretti" <mfioretti@mclink.it>]

On Tue, May 22, 2007 06:08:41 AM -0400, Miles Fidelman
(mfidelman@meetinghouse.net) wrote:

> M. Fioretti wrote:
> >(*) yes, the moderators, that is listmasters or whatever you want to
> >call them. I have read your objection that this is a not moderated
> >list, but it is irrelevant. My proposal was to ban outright your email
> >or IP addresses, not to hold and check each single email sent to the
> >list by anybody.
> >  
> There's a legal issue here that nobody's mentioned.
...
>
> position and liabilities change depending on how you manage a list.
> 
> So... when you start proposing that somebody assume a lot of potential 
> legal liabilities.

you are right to say that I had not considered this side of the issue.
The main reason is probably that the same kind of discussion happens
regularly on most lists (including several I follow which are surely
hosted in the USA) and this is the very first time I see this concern.

I wonder if the criteria you mention apply in this case, though.  The
problem here and now is not so much signatures or what somebody says,
but the fact that they say it and say it and say it and say it and say
it and say it and say it and say it and say it and say it and say it
and say it and say it and say it and say it and say it and say it and
say it and say it and say it and say it and say it and say it and say
it and say it...

It is much closer to Denial of Service than hate speech, rudeness and
such. Like, you know, when an ISP blocks a customer because his or her
pc was possessed by some spambot: nobody thinks that that user is
guilty of rudeness, hate speech, whatever. But he or she must be
stopped until he reformats the hard disk, no?

I also have the feeling that a [strictly moderated, no OT] and
[unmoderated, debian-ot] lists pair may solve the problem, but I'm no
lawyer, of course.

	Marco