Coren's Off-Wiki Activities, Would you have voted for him if...? Options

[Coren]

Moderator's note: This topic was split from the Sam Blacketer thread, as the material deals primarily with Coren (T-C-L-K-R-D) 's "off-wiki" activities, which were presumably not related to those of "Sam Blacketer." In addition, several posts containing speculation relating to Mr. Coren's activities on Usenet in the mid-1990's, and how they might be in some way related to Mr. Boothroyd's activities on Usenet in the mid-1990's, were split from there and moved to a non-public forum. Please note that an extremely large number of people were active on Usenet in the mid-1990's, including several WR members. Past Usenet activity is not necessarily evidence of collaboration, or even personal familiarity, though it could be evidence of one's having had a poorly-developed social life during that time.

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I don't think that Coren has much of a choice but to do that, as we shall see shortly...

(Read my last akahele post for clues about this...)

Oh, wait! I realize you might be talking about http://gai-eros.org

And here I thought you were talking about something interesting.

For those of you not in the know, I am the system administrator for a Francophone alternative erotica archive site. It's pretty much the French equivalent of the Nifty archive, though nowhere near as large or old (gai-eros is only 13 or so years old). Not only is it boringly legal, but I don't actually have much to do with the contents itself.

(Note: very much NSFW address).

Someone once said that the Internet is but trolls and porn. I dunno about just the trolls, but good ol pr0n is pretty much universal. I do have very strong convictions on the topic of free speech and sexual freedom, and erotica is the intersection of the two. :-P

At any rate, if anyone was hoping to scare me away with this, or blackmail me... hah!

And no, it's not even a secret from ArbCom. I don't publicize my association with the site on Wikipedia for the simple reason that enwp isn't about getting traffic for a site I'm maintaining, and I very much doubt it's notable enough to be an article topic (though, IIRC, it got some very nice positive press coverage some years ago).

As for what this has to do with my being an Arbitrator... well, I'll be damned if I can guess. I promise to recuse if *any* website I am the sysadmin for ends up being involved in a case? Heh.

-- Coren

This post has been edited by Somey:

[Coren]

(I'm not clear on how Usenet worked, so I don't know how he got suffrage on the question in the first place. But there doesn't seem to be any reason at all to implicate any David Boothroyd of whom we're aware with zoophilia.)

There never was any sort of suffrage for voting on newsgroup creation. The basic idea is that someone who wants to create a newsgroup in the main hierarchy (that means anything but alt.* (and does not include country hierarchies which all had their own rules and procedures)) only needs to post a request to the proper newsgroup, and people who subscribe to that newsgroup voted.

Most subscribers to those maintenance newsgroups were either news admins or sysadmins; or just plain were interested in the otherwise inane and boring chatter between UUCP (or, later, nntp) sites. I wouldn't ascribe any sort of sexual interest to anyone who voted in one direction or the other -- I very much doubt half of news admins had interest in bestiality -- because the voting criterion usually had more do to about a newsgroup being "on topic", on in the "right" part of the hierarchy than any sort of judgment on the proposed topic itself (though that sometimes factored in).

As to the David Boothroyd that voted there, I have no idea if it's also the current Arb. I never had any contact with any of the people on that list (one direction of vote or another) except when they happened to be nearby news admins. I would tend to doubt it very much though; it's the wrong continent, the wrong field of study, and I'm pretty sure the David that was an arb is also too young for the timeline to fit.

Incidentally, "Marc-Andre" is a fairly common first name, and "Pelletier" is, last I checked, the second most common last name in Quebec (second only to Tremblay) -- I'd be careful to ascribe things you find to a random "Marc-Andre Pelletier" to me. In fact, I even know of one that's a dentist that flies small prop planes that was born on the same day I was (which, lemme tell you, makes getting insurance a pain).

In that particular case, I was that Marc-Andre. I think my stance of freedom of expression is well known. And, again, that still brings the same question forward (which nobody has answered with anything else than victorian outrage that I might be *shudder* involved in the pr0n "millieu"): what the hell does that have to do with my capacity to be an Arbitrator?

-- Coren

[Kato]

In that particular case, I was that Marc-Andre. I think my stance of freedom of expression is well known. And, again, that still brings the same question forward (which nobody has answered with anything else than victorian outrage that I might be *shudder* involved in the pr0n "millieu"): what the hell does that have to do with my capacity to be an Arbitrator?

-- Coren

Is it now "Victorian" to shudder at the idea that you managed a website promoting bestiality?

One of the more curious features of hard-core Wikipedians is the inability to understand boundaries, and the inability to differentiate between exploitation and erotica. During the numerous debates about pedophilia and sexualized images of children on Wikipedia, it became apparent that many Wikipedians actually saw the matter as one of Freedom of Speech. This was extraordinary to observe. Wikipedians also seemed unable to distinguish between what was adult pornography, and what was gross exploitation / abuse of vulnerable subjects.

Another feature of their arguments was the use of cringy Internet-speak to defend themselves. Lots of "Think of The Children" mocking against complainants.

Coren, you can write things like "pr0n" all you like to try to play the site down, but a place that advocates abusing animals isn't anything to do with "pr0n" or "freedom of speech".