Replies

I thought I would share an e-mail exchange I just had. I sent the following to Jim Robinson:

Verification

To Jim Robinson | 09/03/2003 10:20 PM CDT sent

I normally wouldn't bother you with something this trivial, but a user has posted some info I felt needed to be verified.
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In this post:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/974961/posts?page=35#35
Coral Snake writes:
"I appologize for accusing any Linux users here of practicing censorship. I sent a Freep Mail to Jim Robinson and found out it is the official Free Republic policy to place these tech threads in the General Interest forum from now on. Just reminding all of you out there when you are ready to start posting them again so that you won't be banned for constantly placing these threads in the wrong forum."

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Have you made such a statement? If not, I'm sorry to bother you - I suspect that this user may hope to minimize the visibilty of this important ongoing story. If you did state that we only post this to general, please excuse me while I express that this lawsuit has important ramifications all linux users (and seeing that FR runs on Apache and Linux, this includes you).

I respectfully ask that you allow us to continue to post this to the frontpage news section so long as we stay off the breaking news.

I would consider posting to breaking news ONLY if SCO's offices were raided by law enforcement or something of that scale happened. There is an Enron style scandal developing here. This story does have the potential to create the occasional breaking news story.

I received this in return

Re: Verification
From Jim Robinson | 09/03/2003 11:13 PM CDT read

He asked me (paraphrasing) if he should post his threads to the general interest forum since we seem to be moving them all there anyway. I said yes, it would save us the trouble

(end)

So, it does change the way I read your earlier post. Jim doesn't say anything about banning users. Just that he would prefer a post to General. That seems to be a distortion as far as I'm concerned. Coral Snake, I really don't give much credibility to anything you say anymore - but you really should consider that some things are easy to verify before you distort them.

I will, however, obey Jim's wishes that we keep this story in General. If A major development occurs that calls (IMHO) for this story to go to another section, I'm not going to lose any sleep over placing it there. I'll simply inform Jim of why I felt it was needed.

And before you even ask Coral Snake - if you do something and I bust you on it I will share the info with the others.

Thanks for clearing this up. I was wondering where the tech threads had gone.

Actually you can thank Liberal Classic for the Ban thingy.
He was the one that told me that frequent violation of official FR policy would lead to banning. And I take the fact that these computer flame wars that are not based on truely breaking news (Like actual arrests at SCO or Microsoft for their "pump 'n' dumping" as a forinstance) are now being reposted by Mr. Robinson to General Interest means that this is now official policy and that too frequent moderator repostings from news/activism to General Interest caused by the same individual can result in a ban just like any other violation of official policy. I believe that my own FReep mail answers from Mr. Robinson also confirm that posting these computer articles to General Interest is now official policy. The only ones that tend to stay in news/activism for any length of time are Microsoft articles that are about the newest virus or other genuine breaking news. All of this is why I'm going to "cool it" on
posting what are just simply the latest idiocies from SCO
or Linux users on news/activism.

Actually I can see why Mr. Robinson wants to keep this in general interest. It is simply really NOT REAL NEWS now. There is no actual trial going on but just a lot of threats accusations and speculation on both sides in the actual lawsuit and flame fights that always end in rather heavy moderation by both sides here at FR.