Forum: Community Center


Subject: banned?

KeepItFree opened this issue on May 14, 2002 ยท 40 posts


Anthony Appleyard posted Thu, 16 May 2002 at 12:17 AM

I am in England. I don't know much about this Bebop case, but I may as well report a case when I saved someone from being banned unjustifiably. It was many years ago in an email group called Virus-L about how to warn about and detect and stop computer viruses. A man called James Huang in Taiwan wanted information about viruses for VAX computers, and his message included this sentence:- I want to spread this. and the group's manager said he was going to ban "this character" for wanting to spread virus. I answered urgently pointing out that a man with a Chinese-type name in a Chinese-speaking area was likely not perfect at English and that that sentence could equally mean "I want to spread information about how to detect and combat VAX computer viruses"; he was guilty only of "unclear or ambiguous use of a pronoun".