On Sunday March 26 2006 09:31, Uri Even-Chen wrote: > Michael Vasiliev wrote: > > Oded, there are some things that I will certainly not tolerate on this > > list and xenophobia is one of them. Consider yourself officially warned. > > In case you decide to continue pursuing that topic, I'll arrange you a > > personal vacation with less reading and writing. Have a nice day. > > Have you never heard of freedom of speech? I don't agree with what he > said, but he has the right to think and say it! He didn't curse and > didn't break any rule, he just said that he thinks the American decision > makers are stupid. I think there are some truth in it. But I wouldn't > use the word stupid - I would use the words arrogant, selfish etc.
First of all, I am a subscriber of the list for years, under various identities, and I think no one ever claimed that this list is to be a model of perfect democracy. I have reasons to believe that its creators never intended it to be like that (otherwise, why there is a mod?). Second, it is natural that every list subscriber have the right to say or yell whatever he likes AND take full responsibility for his words. I don't think that freedom of speech is all about the ability to troll or initiate a smear campaign every time you have a bad day. Third, I reserve the right to decide on my own what I see fit and what not, in absence of the board of moderators. Quite frankly, I don't need to explain my actions to anyone and my decisions are final. When each and every one joined, he or she agreed on the fact that the list is post-moderated. If any of the subscribers feel very uneasy about this fact, they are welcome to raise the topic on the public discussion, mail the owner, or, ultimately, un-subscribe <sigh>. Fourth, the topic has been raised in the past and my actions were questioned before. For some people, even my occasional interference with the _free_ discussion is bad enough. I want to make clear that there are no strict guidance or censorship on that list, other that the usual screening of automatically selected incoming mails to detect spam. No matter how silly I think the post is, it is being let through, and only then I decide on it's quality. Most curious readers could find exactly how many posts have the X-Approved-By: header. These were forwarded to the list manually. Fifth, I understand completely that the spirit of freedom, so abundant in the main topic of this list, has to manifest itself somehow in the list rules. For this reason, I suggest that the moderator group position(s) should be filled by annual election, similarly to moderated Usenet groups. Now, I strongly suggest that all inquiries of that nature should be directed to me or Ely via private mail. There is no reason to add to traffic on this list with discussions of that nature. -- Sincerely Yours, Michael Vasiliev Linux-IL moderator "Program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence." -- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]