Michael Hart wrote:
On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Michael Dyck wrote:
Michael Hart wrote:
None of these are my views, none written by me, or at my instigation.
So are you saying that you did *not* write the following sentences, and that they do *not* reflect your views?
-- "No mention is made of what to do about those for whom no transportation is available. . .those were obviously beneath the radar scope of planning."
-- "Somehow it seems that those farthest from the situation are the only ones willing to state what is obvious locally."
-- "I supposed the strangest words of the week were those NOT heard, as NBC censored Kanye West's comments"
-- "5/8 of Bush's emergency management appointees had no experience"
These are all things I received from readers such as yourself,
(no, not such as myself)
and I always ask if they want a credit line before putting any attributions. Often I receive no answer by time to send.
Let me see if I've got this straight. From out of the blue, people send you these items (including opinions and first-person statements, with no references to back them up), and ask you to include them in the PG newsletter (without credit). You do so (putting them in the Founder's Comments section), even though the items: 1) have nothing to do with Project Gutenberg, 2) do not represent your views, and 3) go counter to your desire to "stay pretty much as far away from politics as I can get". This seems rather irresponsible to me. Is there anything preventing the PG newsletter from becoming a mouthpiece for every nutbar who has your email address? (I'm tempted to submit an item saying "Jefferson was the Antichrist! Democracy is fascism! Black is white! Night is day!".)
Given that these items appear in 'Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section of the Newsletter', I think the natural inference is that any un-attributed comments are yours, and represent your views.
My views usually appear in the [brackets], which is usually stated each time, whether such [brackets] are used or not at the time.
What is usually stated is this: *Headline News from Edupage [PG Editor's Comments In Brackets] (followed by Edupage items) which indicates to me that the editor's-comments-in-brackets convention only applies to the Edupage section. If you want the unattributed statements/opinions to *not* be ascribed to you, I think you need to be a lot clearer about it than you are currently.
If you were staying as far away from politics as you could get, you wouldn't be including political items in the newsletter.
Obviously some people are going to view something as political that other people don't,
Okay, then let me rephrase: If you were staying as far away from politics as you could get, you wouldn't be including items that some people are going to view as political.
but I assure you that my own goals are anything BUT political.
Well, what *are* your goals? (With respect to these items.) Do you think your actions are effective in furthering those goals?
So if you quote someone as saying "George Bush doesn't care about black people", you think that *isn't* a political hot button?
Actually, it was the censorship I tried pointing out, not the statement.
The whole reason for pointing out what doesn't get covered is to avoid the censorship in the news.
I don't think you answered my question. -Michael