Librarian's attitudes toward filtering: The turning t

[CMUNSON]

I'm sorry if I sound overly defensive, but I've gotten really sick of 
all the personal attacks and what I see as "ganging up" tactics by 
anti-filters.
     
     Sorry Dave, if you think the generic use of the term "CyberNOTsie" 
     apllies to you. Believe me, some of us take it very personally when 
     our sites are "filtered" by censorware.
     
When 10 people respond to a post and basically offer the same criticism, 
and throw in personal attacks as well, this strikes me as ganging up, as 
unfair, and it  gets me pretty upset.  When the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th 
person "piles on" with basically the same criticism, as happened again 
last week, this doesn't strike me as debate, it strikes me as an attempt 
to silence debate, and I feel the need to speak up, least anyone get the 
impression the debate has been successfully silenced.
     
     Uhh, this is known as debate. Maybe you aren't "winning" if so many 
     people are speaking out against filtering. Yeah, "me toos", can get to 
     be annoying, but are essential if everybody who wants to say something 
     can.
     
What I'm really fighting for is a little respect more than anything.  I 
truly feel that the positions and ideas of librarians sympathetic toward 
filtering have not been given proper respect by a number of people on 
this list.
     
     Sorry, but we read the newspapers and it seems like public libraries 
     are rolling over without so much as a fight. When one is familiar with 
     what a censorware product such as CyberPatrol does, and have 
     first-hand experience with being blocked, one gets alarmed when one 
     hears about libraries installing such a product. You are free to 
     express your opinion, but we have our too, and there are others.
     
If the people who feel so strongly against filtering would stop the 
name-calling, the ridicule and the ganging up, it would go a long, long 
way toward civilizing the debate.
     
     We haven't been having a civilized debate? Is debate civilized when 
     people just agree with each other? I guess I'm just used to other 
     forums where the speech is more free-wheelin'.
     
BTW, I don't think anyone on this list is arrogant or stupid.  I was 
describing a position as stupid and arrogant, not any people that way.
     
     Yeah David, you sound like a smart guy, but you position is stupid. 
     ;-)
     
Maybe a new list , "WEB4FILTER", needs to be started, devoted 
exclusively to the discussion of filtering.
     
     Nice try, but this would only be an attempt to marginalize this 
     important discussion about "web in the libraries." Anybody can do 
     this, but i will continue to post here. This is the most important web 
     policy debate to ever hit libraries. Too bad, others (polticians and 
     journalists) are trying to set the terms of the debate before we've 
     ahd time to discuss it.
     
Since I agree that pretty much everything than can be said on this topic 
has been said, why don't we all agree to a 30 day moratorium on 
discussing filtering, unless someone truly has something to say that 
hasn't been said already.
     
     Hah! Why don't you "filter" out this thread? It's nice of you to 
     decide for us that this topic is exhausted. What else do you want to 
     decide for us? Would you like to add my websites to your CyberNot (tm) 
     list?  How about adding "censorware" as word to be filtered?
     
Unless this debate starts to rage up again, and by that I mean 7 or 8 
new posts on the topic within a 1 or 2 day period, this will be my last 
post on filtering for quite sometime.  I think we would all benefit from 
just letting it cool off for a while, especially the poor people who 
just want to know how to make Netscape print properly and how to make 
their CGI scripts run well.

     Yeah, if only life were so tidy. You want us to shut up so that by 
     the time we get this properly discussed, we'll have even more 
     censorware installed.
     
     What if somebody want to get Netscape to properly print a page that has 
     been filtered?
     
     Chuck Munson