Consideration vs. Censorship

[steveb@falcon.kla.com (Steven Buchholz)]

> Finally, any suggestion that our ongoing dialogue, yet alone any other
> on the 'Net, should be determined according to certain Politically
> Correct rules of engagement (notice that I did not say censorship), is
> far more offensive than the endless nattering over NASCAR to which we've
> been subjected in recent days.
> 
The quattro list is not a moderated list.  It turns out that posting is not 
limited to those who $ub$cr!be [almost forgot!] to the list.  Anyone with 
the appropriate e-mail service can post anything that they want to the quattro
list ... from anywhere around the world.  

IMHO, one of the reasons that the quattro list is so active is that fact that
it tends to have a pretty high signal to noise ratio.  I believe that we need
to do whatever we can to preserve this, otherwise it is worth no more than
an AOL chat room.  From time to time events of petty bickering occur to cause
a reduction in this signal to noise ratio, and given the fact that the list is
unmoderated, it takes notices by members of the list that are being bothered 
to ask for a return to reason.  When I feel it to be necessary, I usually 
express my concerns to people using direct e-mail.  

My personal opinion is that I don't have much issue with the occasional 
NASCAR/Mopar/Bill Gates Ferrari/whatever posts, but when I check my 
messages and find that nearly half the messages in the box convey no useful 
information at all, not even about NASCAR then I've got a problem.  A couple 
of interesting notes from my perspective ... a post about some non-Audi topic 
may bother me a little, but a post about something non-Audi related that in-
cludes some kind of disclaimer about not wanting to anger the censors usually 
evokes more of a negative reaction ... an Audi related post that was really 
directed toward a single person and should have been sent as a direct e-mail 
bothers me more than most non-Audi posts.  I personally do not consider this 
censorship, more a request for sensitivity and consideration for the hundreds 
of people that are having to deal with each post that is made to the list.  
IMO "Political Correctness" (R) has nothing to do with it ... if it did I 
wouldn't be here.  On the other side, I have learned of other q-list members
with which I have other common non-Audi related interests, which we can 
carry on off-line, so a strict requirement of having some Audi relationship
to all posts is not necessarily the best way to go either.  

I do know of individuals that have been long time q-list members that have 
left because they feel the list has insufficient value to them.  Of course, 
this is their own decision ... but it can also be a loss to the q-list and 
its members.  

My personal modus operandi is that before I include <quattro@coimbra.ans.net>
in the delivery list for any message I ask myself if there will be more than 
one or two people on the list that may get some value from it.  If the answer
is no then I'll send a direct e-mail message.  Of course this is my own de-
cision, which is not guarantted to be the correct one :-).  I exhort all 
members of the list that consideration, not censorship, be the guide.

Thanks, and apologies for the lack of Audi content ...
Steve Buchholz
s_buchho@kla.com
San Jose, CA (USA)