Re: Some thoughts on censorship in this mailing list.

[Marcel]

On 11/1/19 9:34 PM, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Marcel:
> 
>> The worst aspect about this whole episode--from my perspective in
>> isolation--is that nobody can tell that I am trying to respond
>> thoughtfully and intelligently to their posts; the censors do not even
>> need to forward a note to forum members saying that such and such other
>> member has been silenced nor do they need to provide a specific response
>> mentioning the "offending" portion of the post. This makes the
>> censorship even more violent.
> 
> This is not true.  You can send your reply directly to the author of
> the post you are repling to and Cc: the list (like I did in this
> message).  This way, they receive your response, whether or not it
> makes it to the list.  Mailing list moderation is simply not a very
> effective tool for suppressing voices.  After all, anyone can take
> addresses from the list and harass posters off-list.

Of course Sandra received all three of my responses, but my responses
were not only for Sandra, they were for all the people who read my
initial post and her response to it. She was given the chance to tell me
what she thought and have it published for everyone else to read, and so
far I have been refused a right of response.

Did Sandra inform the list that my responses to her had been censored?
No. Either she stayed silent or her attempts to warn the rest of the
members in the list were censored too. I did not harass anyone. I
expressed myself, as I am doing now, and every time I did so, my posts
were silently kept from the list.

If all three versions of my response all violated the censor's rules, so
did her message; at least as far as it concerned the "harshness"
Guideline toward RMS. I asked the censors to point to the "offending
parts" so that I could remove them and post the rest of my response. I
was not told which parts had to be removed.

After my second version was rejected, I decided I would debug my message
and see what parts made it through. I chose to start with the last bit,
which I will not quote again because it was also rejected and may cause
this whole message to be rejected.

Basically, she said her understanding of the mission of GNU was to
produce "high-quality software that is free for anyone to use" and I
responded by saying what she wrote is the definition of freeware, not
Free Software, and pointing her to the section of the philosophy section
that describes free software and the Four Freedoms. This message was
rejected.

I then decided to start a new thread about the censorship in the forum.
That thread was censored and rejected.

I then answered Dmitry Alexandrov telling him he had cut off my sentence
and paragraph when he answered my post, thereby changing the meaning of
what I said. That was censored.

I then wrote another post to Dmitry quoting the punchline to Zizek's
joke about the man who gets sent to Siberia and tells his family he will
write in blue ink if everything is fine and in red ink if it is not.
When the first letter arrives, it talks about how beautiful and perfect
everything is. The only problem is there is no red ink. That post was
censored.

Other posts were also censored. Many of them were CC'd to RMS, some were
CC'd to Dora, and some were CC'd to a couple of others. That does not
take away from the fact that I was isolated and silenced.

I believe you are confused about the meaning of the censorship I
suffered in this mailing list. Was I the only one? Is it still ongoing
(it seems not, but I cannot tell when my next post will be censored
again). I read from Dora's first post to this list that she was made to
wait for five days before being granted membership. That is another
example of censorship.