ATTENTION THREAD MEMBERS!
Here is a draft of a letter of support for Sioux Pal, to be sent to SI Admin today.
Please, right away from you:
-- any suggestions for further points to be made
-- your support in the form of inclusion of your posting name
========================================================
Dear SI Admin,
The undersigned write to request that you restore posting
privileges immediately for the Moderator of this thread "Sioux Pal" for these reasons:
-- as moderator, he has performed in an exemplary manner, allowing free participation to anyone and banning only those whose primary interest in the thread is a venue for argumentation and personal abuse. In our view, those are the people that sully the threads on SI, and as proof of that we suggest that you go to the investment threads on Yahoo. Probably looking at any thread for 10 posts should convince you on this point.
-- very often scatalogical language is used by such people as part of their personal abuse and invective. This has never been tolerated by Sioux Pal, regardless of the otherwise meritorious
nature of the contributions they have to make.
-- the use of the word "f*ck" these days is utterly commonplace. As proof of that go to:
google.com
and you will find about 8,540,000 instances.
Among those you will find good discussions of the use of the
word such as:
en.wikipedia.org
As an example of widespread usage, we refer you to the HBO
series "Deadwood" which occurs often daily from 9pm onwards
on cable television. Here are the statistics on its use of the
word "f*ck"
en.wikipedia.org
Cable TV series: Deadwood
"HBO's series Deadwood had a reputation for salty dialogue even before the first episode aired. It was nearly impossible, they said, to keep count of the number of f-words spoken during each program. We took it as a challenge.
Total fucks in series: 1519
Cumulative series FPM: 1.45
Total fucks in Season Two: 688
Average fucks per episode: 98.3
Cumulative Season Two FPM: 1.84
Total fucks in Season One: 831
Average fucks per episode: 69.3
Cumulative Season One FPM: 1.23 "
We understand that the Supreme Court has addressed the matter of the use of such language on public television and has ruled that it is allowable at broadcasting times when minors are not likely to be present (from 9 pm local time onwards). We would submit that posting on SI is an implicitly ADULT environment
and therefore there should be NO ban on the occasional use of such language.
-- Based on Google search, SI is hardly a cesspool of filth revolving around the use of the word "f*ck".
This search on Google
google.com
turns up only 136 instances, most of which are not ON SI--presumably for the reason that your posts are in the database and not directly addressable by Google. So it is VERY unlikely that anyone looking for "f*ck" action would find their way to SI.
In short, we believe that cutting the posting privileges of
Sioux Pal and leaving a moderated thread unmoderated is unjustified, unnecessary and unwise.
A simple possible solution is your posting the updated SI policy on these matters (or directing us to it) including the listing of specific words that you wish to minimize or avoid. This could be pointed to in the Opening Post of the thread.
Understand that there is a fine line between the application of your "property rights" as SI Admin and the
"freedom of speech" rights granted in the U.S. Constitution and amendments. So I think you would agree that your censoring rights are considerably less than those of a Minister over the activity within his/her Church or a School Teacher over the activity in his/her classroom. And likely less than those applied to broadcast over the public air waves.
Let's simply find an adult and non-repressive answer to the
so-called problem and restore our Moderator forthwith.
We need him!
Sincerely,
(thread members)
James Calladine
YOUR NAME HERE |
