It's
generally bad etiquette to quote private words in public in most situations.
If I have a private, face-to-face meeting with my boss and tell him that I think my manager is incompetent, I wouldn't expect him to turn around to my manager and say "Allan says you're a horrible manager ...". That would be very poor etiquette on behalf of my boss and I'd be thinking about quitting since I obviously can't trust him to keep a confidence.
When we correspond with people and address that solely to them, there is an expectation of privacy that should be honored in that correspondance. Whether the technical aspects of Internet communications allow for questionable levels of said privacy this not a valid excuse to ignore etiquette. This is the one of the reasons we have encryption for many forms of communication - it's not just for the "bad guys" who have something to hide. Lonn, in most cases, I would enthusiastically disagree with the sentiment of self-censorship. People should be encouraged to speak their minds and I'd argue that suppression is not a valid "cure" for any issue.
However, as with anything, there are exceptions to the generalities. Let's say we're all at a party and some of us get into an argument in the backyard with some jerk who keeps hogging the doobie (analagous to self-serving). This person (let's call him Bogart) flies off the handle about me saying to him "hey, it's not a microphone, bro, pass it on ..." - and goes into a crazed rant about how he's free to do whatever he wants; "there's no doobie smokin'
rules, dude, lighten up you fuckin' nazi!". So, a trivial argument ensues and Bogart storms off in a huff when a few people back me up.
Later on, Bogart corners one of those people (let's call him Pete
), say, in the bathroom, and starts going off about what horrible people we all are and generally saying nasty, uncalled-for things about
mutual friends (those in the doobie argument and out of it). Now, personally, I'd
expect and even praise Pete for coming out and telling everyone what Bogart said. I'd call that social responsibility - talking shit about people behind their backs just ain't cool - especially when it's malicious and hateful for virtually no reason.
In that case, I think Bogart deserves no respect for puking his shit all over Pete in a private setting and for him to expect any level of privacy in doing so is absurd. This is
absolutely one of the exceptions to what I was saying above.
I've written all of this having gotten to the post in question
after it had been censored. So, I don't even know what Damon wrote.
I don't want to know. However, I won't say that Nic was necessarily wrong to censor you, Pete. It's a tough job to moderate and Nic made a judgement call on what he thought (generally correctly) was bad behavior for a public forum. But, it's
all about context. As I said above, I think you were perfectly justified in doing what you did, but let's not all get down on Nic for doing what he saw as being his job in helping to cultivate a less aggressive community atmosphere. Censorship sucks, but moderation is necessary.
Nic, for future reference, you
could take a slightly less aggressive stance on such issues (at least publicly) and seek out the advice of your peers as you are not the only moderator and should be willing to accept (and acquiesce to) a different opinion. It's your call at the time, certainly, but your responses to why you did it were sort of heavy-handed. Don't feel bad about it though (assuming you might) - it's a learning process (for
all of us) and you're doing a great job
In closing, I'm really sorry for my role in fanning the flames in that thread and it does sadden me to see such aggression exhibited. That being said, flame wars are waaaay more entertaining than tiresome technical conversations or braggadocio. I just wish it was abstracted a little more so that real people's feelings wouldn't get hurt in the process.
Anyhow, that's my take
Peace, Love and Footbag.
Obviously locking a topic didn't stop discussion from continuing anyway as people just started new topics. Your persistence is an inspiration to us all.
!
Maybe ya had to be there ...
I so don't have time for any of this, but I feel compelled. Having Ellis, Lon, Daryl, Richie, Jim, Peter, Lonn ... all posting on here in the past couple of days has been a blast 
> 
