16443: Corbett: Things not posted to the Haiti list (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Greg Chamberlain pointed out there was a few other GENERAL cases where I
don't post items.  With his help I have put together a more extended list.

================

The general principle is to try hard not to censor any material FOR THE
POLITICAL content, or that the post with OFFEND SOMEONE'S SENSIBILITIES.

Given that, as best I can remember, these are the exceptions:

	1.  There was some vague notion of just something being too much
		of a violation of contemporary tastes to publish.

		In all those years, and probably more than 30,000
		posts by now, there have been no more than 6 of those.

		Happily, none in the past several years.

	2.  Posts which attack a LIST MEMBER personally for a post
		posted.

		This happens daily.

	3.  Some post that frightened me that I might get into legal
		trouble.

		There hasn't yet been one of those yet.

	4.  No fund raising appeals, no matter how important the cause
		save posts of my own organization, People to People.
		The reason for this was that one of the original
		motivations of my founding this list was to replace the
		magazine I published on Haiti which had fund-raising as a
		major purpose.

		In fact I have seldom used that privilege to ask for
		funds.

	5.   Posts must be centrally about HAITI, HAITIANS OR HAITIAN
		AMERICANS.  I don't post items which are generally
		about the Caribbean, or about "black" issues generally.
		This is not a list about those issue, but about Haiti.

		Nor do I post items about other places which have
		"relevance" to Haiti.  This is a strictly Haiti list.

	6.  There is a harder case about commercial or personal promotion.

		Generally I don't post such items unless it seems to me
		a clear case of items which people are likely to want to
		know about for NON-COMMERCIAL purposes.  For example,
		the announcement of a showing at a gallery or a new
		book being published.

	7.  Posting old news items unless there is a key relevance in
		replying to current issues.

I think that's basically the list.  There may be others.  Just let me know
and I'll upgrade this list.

The key, for me, is that I don't censor things on the grounds of their
political content.  In any one of those cases, the issue is not political,
but something else.

Bob Corbett