[Beowulf] Admin action request

[Joe Landman]

Folks:

   We are seeing a return to the posting of multiple full articles 
again.  We've asked several times that this not occur.  It appears to be 
a strong consensus from many I spoke with at SC13 this year, that there 
is little (actually no) support for the full article postings.  As we 
had noted in the case of HPCwire, InsideHPC, etc. posting the full 
article deprives the authors and publishers of clicks, which deprives 
them of potential revenue.

   Since our requests have again been ignored, we are generally faced 
with a few options on what to do if anything.

   Option 1: Do nothing.  Nothing will change, and we will have someone 
continue to abuse the resources, the authors and the publications.

   Option 2: Personal filtering.  This particular individual actually 
threatened me in another group, and I generally simply ignore anything 
he posts.  I haven't gone as far as active filters for him, but have for 
some of the more egregious tin foil hat wearers of that other group.

   Option 3: Enforce some of our basic etiquette.  If you aren't willing 
to abide by the house rules, you won't be allowed into the house to 
violate the rules.  In this case, I see more than two strikes, so I am 
not all that inclined to be terribly forgiving of these breaches.

   It is obvious option 1 will do nothing.  Option 2 is unsatisfactory, 
as the behavior will continue, and be in the permanent list archive. 
Option 3 seems to be the right approach.

   I am not a lawyer, though its not hard to note that reproduction of 
work without permission could wind someone up in court ... this has been 
the basis for the file sharing lawsuits when content owners get pissed 
off enough.  It doesn't matter if the owner of the list or the hardware 
the list is on didn't put it there.  What matters is that they didn't 
remove it.

   Rather than have to deal with the battle above, I'd ask the powers 
that be to decide whether or not they wish to continue to tolerate the 
astounding breach of etiquette, and the risks that it opens up 
(copyright and redistribution of copyrighted work).

   Note that we've had this conversation before, and been assured by the 
poster that it wouldn't happen again.  As I see it, I've got a number of 
his longer posts going into my SPAM filter, which means I have to 
actively clean it lest google start categorizing all mail from Beowulf 
as spam.

   I am just not seeing an upside to option 1 or option 2, though option 
2 provides local filtration.

   Anyone else have an opinion?

-- 
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics, Inc.
email: landman at scalableinformatics.com
web  : http://scalableinformatics.com
twtr : @scalableinfo
phone: +1 734 786 8423 x121
cell : +1 734 612 4615