That was supposed to be "UNintentionally"

After going on and on, J wrote, in pertinent part:

Yes. Who appointed "J" Fuhrer?

It's been my experience that fools on Usenet are soon plonked or
otherwise disposed of without the "help" of some self-appointed Oberst
von Gestapo controlling us. We are adults not children.

Steve J

"The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of
all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted
platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more
potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a
natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of
virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital
crime against society."
--H. L. Mencken

My head's still reeling from reading your rather stunning charter  one I
can't comprehend any newbie wanting to wade through -- but it does raise
one set of related questions: Is all that necessary? Does it work well?
Is it worth the time of you or other "moderators"? Was your forum THAT
bad BC - Before Charter -- i.e., far worse than a.s.c.p. is?

A.S.C.P. has nothing like your charter, yet we do a darn good job of --
and seem to enjoy -- ripping spammers and nutjobs new ones. If spammers
don't get it, "members" who'd rather PLONK offenders than deal with them
readily do so. Many of us welcome legitimate, undisguised commercial
posts such as those from the excellent ActiCuf incontinence product and
great prices on incontinence underwear; if any commercial interests
harass us or disguises their pitch, they pay a price and we have some
fun extracting it.

We see almost no flaming among legitimate posters (i.e., those with PC
or posting in PC pts' behalf), and if it crops up it doesn't explode or
last long because the rest of us ignore it, shout it down, or resolve
the disagreement. And even the vast majority of unresolved differences
of opinion remain generally restrained, on topic, and impersonal . . .
much more so than any other forum I've seen. Glassman and I don't take
it personally that he advocates eating blubber and I advocate eating
caca verde, it doesn't bother me that some people don't appreciate or
even resent my candor, most OT posts are labeled as such so no one has
to stumble into them accidentally, and the handful of ad hominem posters
usually calm down once their bluff is called. i.e., the vast majority of
discord is self-quenching without invoking Big Gum'mint or usurping the
lives of moderators.

Only one of your charter's lines bothers me specifically, It's "Do not
respond/complain on the newsgroup about inappropriate or off-topic
posts. Ignore them or put them in your kill file." This implies that
it's up to one Chosen Person to detect, judge, prosecute, and punish
violators. IOW, the whole forum's collective and individual brainpower
and participation are suppressed and placed in the hands of one person.
Many of us have fought in regional and/or global wars against that kind
of thinking, and fight it every day right now in the political front.
I've abandoned two forums of vital interest to me because one lacks the
group and individual will to confront bad actors and the other had a
moderator with no concept of right vs wrong, merely an agenda of his own
design.

I.P.