[WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

Fri May 6 21:21:22 UTC 2005

On 5/6/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> >We can
> >use Usenet as a source of information about itself, and about its
> >awards. What we can't do is use it as a secondary source of
> >information about someone or something else. Even if it's true that
> >John Smith won the KOM award, we shouldn't include Smith's name,
> >because to do so is to use Usenet as a *source of information
> >regarding a subject other than itself*. 
> >
> Whoa, that's getting pretty epistemiologically twisty... "A person
> named 'J-o-h-n S-m-i-t-h' was mentioned as KotM on Usenet, but we
> make no claim as to who that designates in real life".

That's not what I meant. I was using the name John Smith only as an
example. My argument about Edmond is that we shouldn't name him at
all, not that we should give him a pseudonym.
> 
> At some point you have to fall back on common sense, or else
> be confined to working on philosophy articles.

Are you saying that people who work on philosophy articles tend to
have no common sense?  LOL! Okay, I may have to concede that one to
you.  ;-p
> 
> Another irony is that Usenet was once as revered as a source
> of good information as Google is today - I suspect part of the
> disconnect in the discussion is the difference in perception
> between people for whom it was an important part of their
> lives (in my case, 1982 to 1994 or so), vs those who've
> never known it as anything other than a flame board.
> 
That's a good point, though we're discussing it as a source the way it is today.

Sarah