Inappropriate tone on this mailing list and requirement for governance

[marc]

Lisi Reisz said:

> On Wednesday 06 May 2009 20:36:58 David Fox wrote:
>> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Barry Smith <bnsmith001 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > One point to think about -- if "ass" in in the badword list, should
>> > it also match A.s.S. or any substring created after punctuation is
>> > removed?  Moderation, and automated scanning, should include the full
>>
>> A precedent exists that makes this filtering stuff undesirable. There
>> was a time when Prodigy was in vogue (anyone remember them) and one
>> person in particular got really upset because he couldn't tell people
>> on Prodigy that his family member graduated "magna cum laude" from a
>> university -- because the posting had the word "cum" in it. Sheesh.
> 
> In England we have counties (administrative districts) called Middlesex,
> Essex and Sussex.  (Wessex is now obsolete.)  Woe betide any schoolchild
> who is trying to use the Internet for his or her homework if the subject
> is the geography (or history or sport) of the Saxon area of England. The
> usual solution is to let the child use the (unprotected) parental
> computer. ;-) (The north Saxons called themselves the north folk rather
> than the north Saxons, so Norfolk slips under the net.)
> 
> So I am not in favour of using that type of screening software on this
> list!

Obligatory mention of Scunthorpe.

The whole idea of banning words is just silly. And banning substrings 
bonkers.

I find it hard to understand why we are even discussiong this.

-- 
Best,
Marc