Dear Freemage:
I am sorry that what those people have written is offending you, but to decide what is "acceptable" is subjective. What you may like is different from what we may like.
However, what incenses me is your presumptive remark, "There's dozens of places for you to go and put up your dirty pictures on the web." I find that seriously innacurate, since none of us in the NPZ have dirty pictures to the best of my knowledge.
In fact, judging from the remainder of your comments, you are from the school of thought that the people who complain about their pages being deleted are nothing more than common porn pushers, when in actuality they are just expressing their ideas. That was the notion behind the NPZ, that we be allowed to express our ideas freely and without censorship. We are not here to 'put up naked pictures of our dead sisters'.
Basically, all the members of the NPZ want is that if we have an idea, and it does have, for example, sexual content, that it not be decried as "explicit, objectionable", etc.
And I would like to rebut
your comment that "flaming is not censorship". You are wrong, flaming can
be censorship. Case in point: A girl wades onto one of my fanfiction pages,
which contains adult content, and is CLEARLY labeled as such. (Note:
This page is NOT on Geocities). This girl is offended, and decides
to tell me, "U R SICK!! ," blah, blah, blah. In fact, the girl even flamed
my guestbook.
Another point: An easily
offended surfer comes into Tracy Butler's Third Earth Inquirer, and complains
that it is "too volgar" [sic]. The complainer (who was too cowardly
to include an e-mail address), requested that Tracy take it down, even
though it is her site, the pages in question were not "vulgar", and she
pays for that space. So, to contradict your feeling that this is just a
Geocities thing, this is for everyone on the Net that feels such
pressure.
Finally, you cite attempts
by the governments to censor content on the Internet. The arcane rules
imposed by these free page and other pay service providers are a result
of this pressure, because people who want to ignore warnings and take out
whatever they decide offends them have placed such pressure on the providers.
Therefore, in my opinion, (and you can disagree with me) as long as such "objectionable" content appears in a given place, and it is labeled CLEARLY, that is fine. Because such brittle people as the aforementioned flamers have nothing to complain about, they CHOSE to ignore the warnings.
Now, I apologize for the rambling nature of this letter, I have a research grant to work on, so I am in a hurry. If you wish to contact me in the future, please use the NPZ Message board, or my e-mail address, trigsc41@buffalostate.edu.
Sincerely,
Seth C. Triggs