Short info:

Your PIClist messages may be passed by censors and must be approved
before it is actually posted to the list.  This may be done without your
knowledge and you may receive no notification of a particular message
being disallowed by the censors.  A censored message can simply fail to
show up on the list, which you might or might not notice.  If you do,
you are left wondering what may have been wrong with your email client
or network connection at the time.

Long story:

Last October(?) the admins got upset at my pointing out how humerous it
was to suggest that a "54" in a date code represented the week within
the year (since years only have 52 weeks), and I was bumped off the
list.  After a lot of ruckus, James put me back on but said that my
posts would be passed thru censors for approval before being posted to
the list.  I did not find that acceptable, and only discussed list
issues.  I refused to "support" the PIClist by helping people or
otherwise providing value under these conditions.  After some more
discussion, James eventually agreed that I did not in fact break the
rules and said my posts would no longer be subjected to censorship.
Based on that, I started posting on technical topics again, helping
people with questions, etc.

I found out about a month ago that instead of removing censorship from
my posts, I was subjected to secret censorship.  My messages were still
being censored, even though I was told they wouldn't be.  In other
words, I was lied to.  I tried to have a reasoned discussion about this
with the admins. They first claimed that no promise was actually made,
and when I quoted the relevant snippet from the archives it was just
ignored.  I wasn't expecting an apology, but was hoping for a
gentlemanly discussion about the issues and ways to deal with them,
perhaps resulting in a resolution suitable to all. Instead the response
I got from James was roughly "up yours, in your face" (those weren't the
exact words, but that was the overall tone).

At the time I didn't make a fuss about it and quietly stopped helping
people with direct questions and jumped in only when I personally found
something interesting or otherwise felt I had something to gain.  I also
became more active on the Microchip web forum.

I am sending this message because of an incident last Sunday.  I got a
personal message from someone on the list asking about an IIC bus
problem.  There was nothing in the message that needed to be private or
was unique to me.  I get these kinds of messages occasionally.  Most of
the time I just delete them.  That is a near term expedient, but does
nothing to solve the overall problem.  This time I decided to respond,
maybe because it was Sunday and I was home and I wasn't trying to get
some work done.  I responded on the list using the [PIC] tag.  I
explained that I don't respond privately to messages that don't really
need to be private, and why. However I quoted the whole original
question so that others could jump in and answer if they felt like it,
which was why I used the [PIC] tag.

At the bottom I also mentioned that I don't answer these kinds of
questions anymore on the PIClist due to my posts being subjected to
censorship, and suggested that the question be posted to the Microchip
web forum instead. There was nothing rude or insulting in the post.
Unfortunately I don't think I have a copy of it anymore, certainly not
on the machine I am on right now.  At the time, it didn't occur to me to
keep a copy.

This message never made it to the list.  I received no bounce or mailer
error.  Other messages I sent within a few hours from the same machine
with the same setup did get posted.  I have meanwhile found that the
message was indeed silently deleted by a censor.

This leads to the question "why?".  I honestly believe this message
broke no rules previously stated on the PIClist.  I therefore conclude
that the message was rejected merely because the censors didn't like the
content. Perhaps they felt revelations of the facts would be embarassing
to them. Perhaps they don't want public discussion about their policies.
While the admins aren't obligated to listen to anything we say, their
policies should at least be consistent and open.

I believe all the facts presented here are correct, any personal
opinions or conclusions are clearly labeled as such, nobody is being
belittled, and it is tagged [OT].  I have temporarily enabled the [OT]
channel to participate in any following discussion about this matter.


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(978) 742-9014, http://www.embedinc.com
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