Group: alt.discuss Date: Mon, Feb 28, 2000, 1:00am From: nobody@vote.munitions.com

Proposal: alt.discuss.webtv.users.banned-messages

Charter for alt.discuss.webtv.users.banned-messages:

Webtv.users (not to be confused with alt.discuss.webtv.users) is the main WebTV newsgroup and is moderated by 2 WebTV Networks, Inc. (WNI) employees. Many messages, including some of my own about WNI-related problems, have been repeatedly filtered by the mods.

The purpose of this newsgroup would be to post a reproduction or a brief description of messages banned by the mods (except troll, flame, pointless or redundant messages), and discuss issues raised by both the censorship and the information in the message itself.

This will hopefully give us more of an understanding of what information WNI does not want its users to see. Of course, this ng would only be successful if users do not post false messages.

This proposal is not an attack on the webtv.users mods. They work hard in a thankless job and are the only members of corporate WNI that interact with the user base.

This is not a phony proposal or a troll proposal. I know there are many ngs where users can complain. But webtv.users is probably the most posted and lurked ng and I think it would be interesting to see what messages are not reaching the webtv public. In my opinion, WNI requests that the mods filter certain messages. This is not to say that all negative messages about WNI are banned or that certain users are banned. This is clearly not the case. But I believe that it is worse to only filter out certain negative messages, since the users might believe it is an uncensored ng. One topic that has been repeatedly censored is the recent e-mail security breach.

HTML should be disabled (permanently), no spam, trolls, or flames. (Not that me saying this really stops that stuff). Offensive messages, such as racist comments, will be forwarded to abuse@webtv.net, who will take action against violaters of the TOS (yeah, right). Opposing opinions are welcome, but please no excessive "I Love WebTV posts" or use of profanity. And please use the spellcheck option.

Group: alt.discuss.config.announce Date: Wed, Nov 29, 2000, 1:12am From: nobody@webtv.net

Deleted: alt.discuss.webtv.users.banned-messages

alt.discuss.webtv.users.banned-messages had no articles posted to it in 14 days.

Creation Date: Mar 7, 2000
Deletion Date: Nov 29, 2000