[Imc] Robert Meade "Bobby" "Israel" Deaf Messenger

[Paul Riismandel]

Thanks Mike for bringing this up.  I agree with you completely, and while I 
find him mostly harmless, it is clear that his intent is really not 
constructive nor cooperative, and does threaten to taint our website, 
despite our disclaimer.

As the de facto website "editor" I think that this issue brings to the fore 
our need to develop some sort of editorial policy for the website that 
addresses the issue of weeding the Newswire along with choosing the 
Features.  I have an ad hoc features "procedure" that I use and would be 
glad to share.

Believe it or not, I enjoy doing the weekly features update, but I also 
recognize that my role as website "editor" is basically by default, and 
therefore not really by consensus by anyone.  I take the lack of complaints 
or other comments about the website features to indicate that I do a good 
enough job and exert reasonable judgement in doing so, but that does not 
mean that a more consistent and explicit method shouldn't be put in place.

Other IMC's have editorial collectives that work on the front page 
features--I know at least Portland and Maidson do--though those IMC's also 
exclusively publish via their webpages.  We may want to have a collective, 
or maybe just a coordinator (which basically is what I do), or may want to 
put in into the purview of a working group--I'm agnostic on this 
question.  But we should at least decide our approach explicitly and 
actively--at least for the fact that it will withstand outside scrutiny 
better.

(I will note that the relative paucity of locally written stories published 
to the newswire doesn't exactly make the website update a terribly time 
consuming job.  At this point, I think updating more than weekly would be 
pointless, since we're lucky to get a total of 3 locally originated stories 
published in any given week.)

As far as dealing with Mr. Deaf Messenger, I think we need to write a clear 
purpose statement for the newswire, and develop a simple and unambiguous 
method for deciding that a post or posts are inappropriate.  I would like 
to see something built in that is similar in spirit to our personnel 
policy, whereby we at least attempt to reason with someone who becomes a 
nuisance.  This, of course, requires that the person leave a valid e-mail 
address, but I'm comfortable with the fact that one of the risks of 
anonymous posting is the loss of the ability to be reasoned with.

Comments?

--Paul



At 05:26 PM 8/21/2001 -0500, Mike Lehman wrote:
>I think this is a subject we need to bring up at the next Steering Group
>meeting as it may take several discussions to come up with a solution to
>the problem.
>
>Mr. R.M."B.""I."D.M. has been a plague on many IMC sites. His rambling
>dissertations on vaguely religious subjects that constantly and only
>refer back to his previous posts (and his daddy) create the impression
>that the IMC is little more than a crackpot bulletin board.
>
>I was especially disturbed to encounter another of his posts, new on the
>website, just after coming home from handing out 300 public-i's on the
>Quad while urging the recipient to "be sure check out our website." If
>folks on the Quad want to listen to that stuff, there's plenty to choose
>from there. Reading Bobby's rants might be the primary impression that
>someone might have of IMC if they read it today.
>
>I will note right here, for those that might consider taking any action
>to be unacceptable censorship, that his posts generally violate the IMC
>policy that is right there on the Publish page, i.e. they actually are
>not news. I quote from that page, "please post news items only, leave
>your comments for discussion areas".
>
>What prompts me to call for action now are two things:
>1) His posts are hidden regularly at many IMCs, due to exactly the
>problems I've mentioned with his posts simply not being news in any real
>sense. We, who do not take this action at the present, are where he's
>found to hang out. Like our own infamous brick & mortar hanger-out, I
>believe we should act because Mr. R.M."B.""I."D.M.'s targeting of our
>IMC now makes action necessary to avoid a damaging impact on the mission
>and image of the U-C IMC. I wish to invoke the process that we developed
>in our previous experience with intolerable conduct at the IMC. Now we
>have an electronic version of squatting (not that I'm against justified,
>sane squats, don't take me wrong) going on, so we will have to proceed
>in a different manner.
>
>2) His posts now contain comments that indicate that Mr.
>R.M."B.""I."D.M.'s only purpose is to see his story on the front page. I
>quote him here:
>"front page or bust"
>"by bob 10:17am Tue Aug 21 '01  address: nn phone: na na nn na"
>He has taken to appending this comment to every post he makes, an act
>which seems to me rather revelatory of his intentions and motivations,
>which are surely not to contribute to the IMC news effort.
>Hiding his posts may be enough to discourage him and he may just go
>away, as it seems that seeing his name up in lights is his primary
>motivation.
>
>I wish to add this to new business Sunday, but I welcome everyone's
>comments also.
>Mike Lehman
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