[Web4lib] Subscriber Removal Clarification -- slightly long...

[George Porter]

A single post, I swear, and then I'm out of this thread.

Banned 6 years ago for repeated violations of list policy.  Warnings
issued privately, I believe each time, although, as always,
non-responsible parties went with the more direct -- respond to the
entire community (read: web4lib).

Public announcement of ban, as noted again this time, is to document for
the record that action was considered and taken by the editorial board.

Choosing to sign back onto a list from which one has been banned, in
lurker mode, might be tolerable.  To post from the alternate email
address, without seeking reinstatement, is a further violation of the
mutual trust and respect required for civil discourse.  Indeed, one
might consider it sufficient for immediate removal, again.

To then, already past the point of thin ice, display an aggressive
attitude by ignoring the multiple response options available with any
email program/service, grounds for at least a private repimand, is
difficult to credit as an action of an individual wishing to participate
in discourse.

There is no vote here but the membership at large.  This is not
wikipedia.  If folks have a beef about the removal, they need to address
it to the editorial board (addresses available at the list website), not
to the list, in general.

How does this relate to libraries and the web?  If an individual is
administratively or legally barred from a university library (my area of
experience), public or private, and returns to the institution, a blind
eye will often be turned.  When and if an infraction occurs in this new
context, however, the deliberative process will usually be quite short
and to the point.

Individual violated rules.  Individual access denied through process.
Tolerance allows individual to sneak back in.  Subsequent unacceptable
behavior will be dealt with swiftly and with no room for doubt that the
administration means business.

If one had appealed for reinstatement in the intervening time period,
perhaps the clock gets re-set, perhaps not.

Physical realm <-> cyber realm, the social contract remains the same.

George S. Porter
Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering & Applied Science
California Institute of Technology
Mail Code 1-43, Pasadena, CA 91125-4300
Telephone (626) 395-3409 Fax (626) 431-2681
http://library.caltech.edu
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http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html