There’s a funny smell in the woodshed. ALIA’s elists have been alive in recent weeks with accusations of censorship, heated discussion and even some election commentary. It began with a humorous commentary on the coming ALIA elections by Trevor Wakely on aliaVIC. In response, one chap let loose with a stinging rebuke that far outweighed any likely offence in Trevor’s post. Discussion got a little heated, and at some point ALIA decided to take a heavy handed approach, due to what they believed were their responsibilities under “corporate governance”. They removed the listowner and installed their own moderator. A few posts were withheld from the list for a day or so without explanation. Then the posts were released and a short time later the ALIA president posted an explanation and claimed that ALIA does not countenance censorship. The following week, ALIA reinstalled the original listowner and made it clear that the listowner had not been at fault. If folk would like to see the posts in question I recommend joining the aliaVIC elist and reading the February 2007 archive.

As a result of this incident, ALIA is conducting a review of their netiquette guidelines, elist operational rules, and listowner reference. Submissions can be sent to David Pruss, ALIA’s IT manager, by 5pm AEST on Fri 9 Mar 2007.