[design] Re: Design-L, what's the story?

At 05:56 PM 11/27/2004 +0530, you wrote:
>John, the community has moved to Architexturez (146 subscribers), didn't
>know if the migration will work-out. Now I need to what prompted Howard
>to moderate the list! I thought his policy was exactly the opposite, no?
>
>-- Anand. (who is trying to evaluate the factors)
>
>John Young wrote:
>> Anand,
>>
>> Six persons have asked me to be notified when a new
>> design list is established, with me a seventh, Brian an
>> eighth.
>>
>> Thanks very much for your effort on this.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> John
>

Anand,

All discussion of Design-Lv.2 should be public as with all
public affairs, so this response goes to both Design-Ls. And
semi-thanks for posting a truncated version of Howard's
seeming dissimulation.

One member's politico-aesthetic opinion of Design-L's
wretched re-design by Howard:

Based on his onlist messages about disagreement with political
opinions being expressed, Howard instituted censorship, not
moderation, without consulting the list membership on what
the moderation policy would be, and commenced halting
messages which I learned about only by complaints from
those censored.

He attempted to get me to serve as a co-censor in messages he
sent to Bill Verity at PSU and I refused by sending his private
request and my refusal to the list for discussion.

In that message I noted that I had always admired Howard's past
policy to keep the list fully open, and that he, too, would post to the
list requests for his censorship of messages, stating that open
debate of list policy was basic list policy.

His view, as mine as co-list owner, had been to not accede to
offlist control of what could be posted to the list but to put all
policy matters to the list for discussion, the fundamental one
being that nobody had a right to censor another member. Instead,
open debate was the proper answer to disagreement.

His response to you is dissembling characteristic of censors who
have been challenged, to try to persuade others it is an improvement,
to ignore betrayal of what Design-L has always been known for,
to ignore his diminished reputation for openness and fairness, and
to tarnish further his well-deserved admiration as list founder.

A second list is a debate with the original, but so long as Howard
censors what is posted to Design-L there can be no honest debate.
Openly debating Howard and Design_L at the moment is impossible,
as his private message to you demonstrates. I hope that will
change, but if not then I regret to say that Design-L is no longer
trustworthy, like the US Howard wishes to defend with the
authoritarian censorship being enforced nationwide.

Regards,

John



Folow-ups
  • [design] Re: Design-L, what's the story?
    • From: Anand Bhatt.
  • Partial thread listing: