🚀 go-pugleaf

John.Arnold@f103.n632.z3.fidonet.org (John Arnold):
> I'm new to the InterNet. But have been using FidoNet and local
> Networks for about 8 years now.

> Are you talking about InterNet msg areas when you talk about
> Usenet?

Yes.

> It isn't FidoNet or just another local Network.  People have to
> pay to get access to the InterNet and when they choose what areas
> to read they don't want a heap of msg that have nothing or very
> little to do with the area they are reading...  People should
> THINK CAREFULLY before posting in ANY msg area.

I agree with you on this. I'm more than happy with the idea that 
people should post on-topic and crosspost sparingly if at all.

The poor people reading via Fidonet get a particularly raw deal
when articles are excessively crossposted, because the the 
software that builds packets for offline reading doesn't know 
about crossposts. If it did, you would only see one copy of an 
article, no matter how many newsgroups it was posted to.

Crossposting is a fact of life in Usenet. It's not just those 
dirty rotten spammers who do it, everyone does it.

You've probably checked out some of the controversial alt.*
groups. They seem to think nothing of crossposting to up to 20 
newsgroups, many of which are only tenously related to the topic 
under discussion.

I'm not saying that this is a Good Thing, just that it is a fact 
of life.

If you are serious about reading Usenet, you really will have to
use software that was designed for it. That probably means 
bypassing Fido as well.

Actually, its a while since I've read via Fido so perhaps things
have improved.

> If their msg gets deleted because its in the wrong area they'll
> know better next time.  I've seen it time and again on Fido.  You
> can try and tell people but they 9 out of 10 times they will keep
> doing it until their msgs start getting deleted...

There are no moderated aus.* groups at present. There is
no one "official" to say "stop posting this off topic rubbish or 
I'll get your sysop to ban you".

I'm not sure which is worse, a despotic moderator (seen time and 
time again on Fido), or people posting off topic rubbish (seen 
time and time again on Usenet).

There is also the "cancel" message in Usenet. It was never meant 
to be a device for moderating newsgroups, however _any_ Tom, 
Dick or Harriett who can work out the technical details is able 
to cancel messages.

As far as I know, there is no equivalent in Fido, other than 
contacting individual sysops and asking them to manually remove 
messages.


Getting back to the reason I posted the original article on 
"aus.politics cancelled".

I think that this medium has great potential to improve the 
quality of democracy in this country.

The particular article which was cancelled was _political_ 
speech.

Once you allow political speech to be supressed for whatever 
reason, you allow democracy to be diminished.

To quote from the judgement in the Theophanous case (which 
established that there is an implied freedom of political speech 
in the Australian Constitution):

"Because the system of representative government depends for its 
efficacy on the free flow of information and ideas and of debate, 
the freedom extends to all those who participate in political 
discussion. By protecting the free flow of information, ideas and 
debate, the Constitution better equips the elected to make 
decisions and the electors to make choices and thereby enhances 
the efficacy of representative government."

> BFN,
>     John.

...Dave