But who WAS foothead, anyway?
From: Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
Subject: Re: Ethics of posting bundy's apology
View: Complete Thread (22 articles)
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Newsgroups: news.admin
Date: 1992-07-09 08:09:04 PST
In article <6897@lib.tmc.edu>, jmaynard@oac (Jay Maynard) writes:
>>Come again? The avoidance of public shame is an achieved good in itself.
>Come again? Public shame is one of a very small number of behavior
>modification techniques available on the Usenet.
So is deep personal embarrassment, all on his lonesome. So is having
his future feed depend on being a good boy from now on.
> Are you truly
>advocating that the Mad Canceler, get away scot-free with canceling
>over 400 articles he didn't post?
Well yes. Erik Fair was closest to the situation, and if *he* was
satisfied that everything was more or less resolved and that the
imminent death of USENET was postponed for yet another week, then
so am I.
> If so, for heaven's sake, WHY?
Because it's only 1s and 0s, as Erik often said.
>If not, then what would you propose as an alternative?
Getting on with your life. And along the way, notice that without any
reposting of information, our Mad Canceler certainly knew that his
identity was known to a fairly wide circle of serious netters who'd
probably nail him for future stunts.
Meanwhile, the singlehanded action of Sean Eric Fagan is now a major
disincentive for anyone coming clean with anyone in the future.
A personal example--other netters have pointed out they weren't really
bothered that some of their articles were lost in the cancel storm, but
I'm not one of them. Gene Ward Smith and I exposed the Foothead forgeries
so many aeons ago, which led to Foothead getting kicked off USENET by his
site. We still have no idea who he really was, or if he ever showed up
again under a different pseudonym, or what not. I don't think either
of us ever really cared either. Problem solved. His net.persona was
incompatible with such a major choke on his part, so if he came back,
it would have to be from a clean slate. Anonymity permits that.
--
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)