Date:         Fri, 14 Dec 2001 08:22:14 -0800
Reply-To:     Peter Johnson <johnson@SAW.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Peter Johnson <johnson@SAW.NET>
Subject:      filtering out off-color jokes, rants, etc - sort of long
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hello All,

Being Friday and all, I suspect there may well be a number of off-color jokes and comments posted to the list today.  Personally I have not been bothered by these attempts at humor in the past, and have actually enjoyed several of them for they have given me a good chuckle at times.  Some listees have been offended by jokes and digs of various sorts, and I recall last week that a listee posted a response to someone who voiced offense at a particular joke that that person should simply use the delete key so as not to be offended.  The offended party responded by asking how he could know whether the posting was offensive without reading it in the first place.  The solution to this problem is to filter out (delete) potential offensive material before it is read by using filtering criteria features that many email software packages offer (many of you already know about this I'm sure).  For example, MS Outlook Express allows users to define words or phrases that appear in the subject line of incoming messages to trigger specific actions such as move to a different incoming mail folder, delete, forward to another address, etc.  If folks on the list who enjoy posting potentially offensive material would agree to flag the subject line of their posting with words like "off-color" or "ethnic" or "sexist" and users who don't want to receive such material use those words as filtering criteria, we would end up with less anger and resentment and more harmony on this awesome list.

Doing my part to strive for peace.

Peter J
85 Westy GL "Nesta"
Willard, WA