andre@ox.co.za wrote:

We should all be able to agree on the basics...

Andre, You obviously don't have the historical context, and thus, because of that, you don't get the joke. But rather than watching you flail around needlessly and pointlessly for the next couple of weeks, I'll take pity on you, give you the historical context, and then you'll get the joke _and_ understand what you are up against. I already proposed what you are proposing, well more than a year ago now, right here on this list, i.e. coming up with a common accepted definition of the word "abuse". (It seemed then... as it does now... the very height of absurdity to even have a mailing list, let alone a whole working group, dedicated to discussing and formulating policy with respect to "abuse" as long as nobody can even agree what that is, but I digress.) Anyway, my poposal to develop a definition of the word "abuse"... one that could be used by this Working Group, and others... was met with reactions which ranged from people basically telling me to f... I'm sorry... to "sod" off, all the way through to abject stunned silence. Not a single soul on this list at the time said anything that could even remotely be construed as an endorsemdent of the proposal. (I couldn't even get Suresh, whose views and mine are often in alignment, to even second the motion.) (I had intended at that time to just resign from this list in utter disgust, but somehow never was able to bring myself to do so.) Anyway, the point is that it is highly likely that nothing at all has changed in the intervening time since then, and thus, your idea to develop a definition of "abuse" has about as much chance of going anywhere as mine did. In short, you have about as much chance for success here as the proverbial snowball in hell. What you don't understand is that there are people on this list... perhaps even a majority... who have been reading too much Ayn Rand. They adamantly hold the same view of the Internet that Alan Greenspan, head of the U.S. Federal Reserve prior to the 2008 Economic Crisis, held about regulating banks, pre-2008, i.e. that the ideal policy was that everybody should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want, whenever they want, period. Note that even when he was called on the carpet and grilled about the final result of his spectacularly idiotic policies by congressional inquiries in the wake of the 2008 economic meltdown, the best that Greenspan could do was to offer up the lame excuse that he had believed that the banks would never be so foolish as to take actions which might crash the entire system, and that he believed they would avoid doing so, simply because it was in their own best interests to avoid such an outcome. Bottom line: He was wrong. Greed and short-term thinking often make falible human beings act against their own long term interests. Even if nothing else proved that, 2008 certainly did. I don't mean to discourage you from persuing the creation of a definition of "abuse". In fact I wish you all the best of luck with that. I'm only posting now to give you some idea of the fact that we've seen this movie before, and that at this point in time there's no reason to believe that it will end any differently than it did last time. But for whatever it's worth, I second your motion to develop a common definition of the word "abuse". All those in favor, please say "aye". (and cue the crickets) Regards, rfg