To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 12:10:59 -0500
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Things of Interest
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Tue, 29 Oct 2002 09:50:47 -0500 "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
writes:
>         Keith Lynch proposed posting to the WSFA Calendar anything
> requested
> by a WSFA member.  He wondered if this would annoy anyone?  Answer:
> GIven
> WSFA's diversity of opinion, such a policy would be bound to annoy
> someone.
>         I suggest that we leave non-fannish politics off the WSFA
> Calendar
> as (1) not having sufficient fannish interest to merit placement,
> and (2)
> likely to provoke heated debate.
>

A problem I see with trying to have such a policy as an explicit rule is
that the boundaries among politics, science, and philosophy are sometimes
blurred, so rejecting announcements on the grounds of being 'political'
could cause readers to miss out on events or news which might be of
genuine interest to some, including items of interest for reasons other
than political.  For example, politics and fantasy have a strange
conjunction in the current Congressional race in Maryland's 8th district.
 One of the on-the-ballot candidates is running to publicize what he says
is the government's shameful failure to disclose that it knows about the
presence of space aliens living among us.  See
http://www.disclosure2003.net/ .

It would, for example, be a mistake to have a blanket ban on
announcements of WMOD events simply because many people are offended by
Ayn Rand's views.  Wednesday evening's WMOD talk on epistemology is
unlikely to offend anyone's political sensibilities, and I hope that
readers of the web site would be tolerant enough to not take offense at
the mere presence of such announcements.  I think that those who submit
announcements should be broadly trusted to not abuse the privilege unless
and until a real problem arises.  Since Keith has the job of posting
announcements submitted for the web page, it would perhaps make sense to
invest him with a degree of editorial discretion, relying on him to
filter out any inflammatory or irrelevant announcements.

Ron Kean

.

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