🚀 go-pugleaf

An open note to Jeff Killeen:

If you'll recall from our discussion on the net some time back, I said I
would spend some time finding out what DECUServe was today.  I've read
a lot, especally in the DECUSERVE_FORUM, DECUSERVE_INFORMATION, SOAPBOX,
SHOP_TALK, NEW_CONFERENCE_IDEAS, and the recent thread in Security.  

You were right;  things have "loosened up" quite a bit;  looking back
over some of the stuff I questioned, it appears that these may well have
been "first time" issues that were reacted to;  the second time the 
something similar occured, the actions were more thought out and
measured.

There is still have a slight discomfort over where some of the lines are
drawn, such as in the HOBBIES notefile, where a message was hidden
for a word that Time or Newsweek would have published without a second
thought.  Still, even in society at large, these things are based on
community standards, and because the DECUServe in some ways has standards
that are higher than mine (or national news rags :-), this does not
mean that DECUServe does not accomplish it's primary mission.

The recent debate over the news gateway has stressed how important this
culture is to a lot of the membership, and indeed, without a lot of these
folks, there wouldn't be anything to gateway.

So, I'll conceed, you were right.  DECUServe has changed and grown, and
a few less-than-perfect episodes were just that - relatively isolated.
There are elements that I still find slightly frustrating - I tend to
favour somewhat looser rules on speech, and draw the line more liberally
on what words are out of bound (especally in a HOBBIES file);  however,
these tighter restrictions may have contributed to the overall success,
and as such, I can live with them, as I'm sure a lot of others manage
to live with their individual nits.