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**DIGITAL INTERNAL USE ONLY **
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Message from Ron Glover Corporate Personnel OCT 1990
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Over the last several months Digital has been contacted by a number
of individuals and business entities that were angry about negative
comments made about them in our Notesfiles and Conferences. As the
Personnel Policy Manager for Digital I have been the recipient of
many of those notes. I thought I should take the time to post this
note to inform employees that it is not appropriate for them to make
negative comments or references about any person or business entity
in any of Digital's employee interest notesfile or conferences.
There are several reasons why we are establishing this rule. The
first has to do with fundamental fairness. It is simply not fair for
an employee to make a negative comment about a business when we
don't provide those businesses an opportunity to respond and defend
themselves. This is particularly true given the fact that we have no
way of determining whether the comment is honest, fair or accurate.
Clearly Digital has no intention, or desire, to open up its
notesfiles to third-party businesses so that they can engage in a
debate about whether they provide quality services. The only logical
solution then is to ask our employees to refrain from using the
Notesfiles to air grievances they have with individuals, vendors, or
organizations.
In addition to out concerns about fairness, we are concerned about
the potential damage that these kinds of comments may cause to
third-party businesses. In that regard, employees should understand
that they may be personally liable if the statements they make cause
harm to any person or business. Moreover, there is some possibility
Digital may be held liable for such comments as well. Stated more
simply, comments made in a Notesfile or conference are in no way
privileged or immune from claims of liable, slander or defamation.
We are asking all of the users of Notesfiles to exercise discretion
and judgement in the comments that they make in the system. We are
also asking moderators to go back and review the notesfiles they
moderate and to remove any notes that include derogatory references
to third-party businesses.
Please feel free to contact your moderator if you have any questions
on this subject.
Ron Glover
Corporate Personnel Policy Manager
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| Note 2.* "Moderator Actions Summary" has been created for the purpose of
logging moderator interventions which affect specific notes in the file.
The note is read-only to the readership, as the note is specifically designed
to inform the readership of moderator activities which affect notes that have
been written.
In note 2.*, you will find the following sorts of messages (not intended to
be an exhaustive list):
A) "Note n.mmm was deleted due to the policy on obscenities."
"Note n.mmm was deleted due to the policy on insults."
"Note n.mmm was set hidden pending moderator consultation."
B) "Note n.mmm was moved to the tourney bustin' note."
"Note n.0 was moved to an already existing discussion in note p.*"
In addition to posting the actions in note 2.*, all messages that indicate
note deletion or hidden notes will be augmented by mail to the note authors
reiterating the moderator action. This means that if you do not get a mail
message sent to you, then most probably your note did note get deleted! (Do
not, however, take this to mean that our inability to contact you by mail
will preclude us from deleting notes or setting them hidden.)
Moderator actions of the type in category B, which consists of moving notes,
will not ordinarily result in an accompanying mail message unless the noter
is new/unknown/a novice. Such mail messages will be regarded as a courtesy
to the non-regulars (hopefully soon-to-be-regulars) in order to keep the
newcomers informed and unintimidated. They will be directed to monitor 2.*
in the future in said mail messages.
Note 3.* will be used in the future for conference announcements. This will
now make it possible for note 1.* to include only policy statements.
The Doctah
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