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Re: SRH "moderation appeals committee" flaws
In article <31ED2109.12AF@ecn.purdue.edu>,
Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian <rbalasub@ecn.purdue.edu> wrote:
>I think you didn't get Ajay Shah's comment about "screaming from the roof tops
>..". Let me explain. When you weren't reading srh (a few months back, I
>think), Vivek Pai conducted an entirely facile campaign, to prove the
>"incomptence of the moderator".
Please at least have the courtesy to get the facts straight. What I
did was try to clarify the policy on "no sexual posts". That policy,
you might recall, was imposed on the group without allowing any input
from the audience. That policy was also very vague.
At one point, the moderator clearly said that Kama Sutra was off topic
for soc.religion.hindu, and then shortly thereafter, a post on the
Kama Sutra was in fact accepted for the newsgroup.
It's not necessarily the policy itself, but the fact that it was not
reached by any sort of consensus, combined with the fact that it was
not applied evenhandedly.
>There was a post which contained some sexual
>material (I think) and was rejected by Ajay Shah based on that. After that
>numerous posts were made by Vivek Pai haranguing about "rejection of posts".
Once again, the more important issue was that the article was
rejected, but the moderator refused to say what parts could be removed
so that the article would be suitable.
Recall that it wasn't an article about the Kama Sutra, per se, but an
article trying to discuss how the view of sexuality had changed as a
result of the repeated invasions of India. In other words, most of the
article should have been acceptable, but if there were some
objectionable words, the moderator could have easily told the author
about them.
I asked what was objectionable, and so did the author. We were both
refused answers.
>It's basically a no-win situation for Ajay. If he rejects it there will be
>zillions of posts asking why he did it since it has some relevant material. If
No, my question is this - if those articles were deemed inappropriate
merely because they _mentioned_ sex, why is an article _promoting_
illegal drug use allowed?
Recall that the moderator actually defended the article, saying that
it had some relevant parts aside from the drug promotion. However,
this logic was the exact opposite used in the other matter - there,
the entire post was repeatedly rejected because some _unspecified_
portion was deemed inappropriate. Here, even though a specific portion
was inappropriate, the post was not only accepted, but defended.
>he accepts it there will be zillions of posts asking why he did it, again with
>trivial arguments. If there weren't innumerable posts in the past by Vivek
>Pai, catching trivial points, I wouldn't be so skeptical about his intents.
They are not trivial points - they are consistently asking how these
determinations are made, what are the "rights" of the readership as
far as knowing what is off limits, and what are the "rights" of an
author, as far as being told specifically what is objectionable.
>As it is, his intention seems to be posting zillions of posts like this,
>hoping that Ajay cannot keep up with replies, and point out to readers this
>fact, and hence win some converts to the RFD.
My intent has always been to clarify those policies which are horribly
vague at best, and which, in practice, are being applied in an
extremely arbitrary manner.
-Vivek
