Footnotes for Negotiation of Rules on IBMPC

Number Note
1

In describing IBM, Harvard Business School (1988) writes that "IBM prided itself on its corporate citizenship and its strong cultural norms. Permeating the culture were the three "basic beliefs":

  1. Respect for the individual -- caring about the dignity and rights of each person in the organization;
  2. Customer Service -- giving the best service of any company in the world; and
  3. Excellence -- believing that all jobs and projects should be performed in a superior way.
2 A series of small rules changes had been made to IBMPC MEMO between 1981 and 1984. This revision represented a major rewrite, however, and resulted in a distinct rules document, IBMPC RULES.
3

Where an IBMPC participant has a gripe about another append, there is an expected procedure. An October, 1988 append to SENSITIV FORUM indicates that while "there is no conference rule here, ... contacting an appender's manager without first contacting the employee, forum owner, and IBMPC administrators is bad form, and should be STRONGLY discouraged." This informal rule clearly does not apply to the IBMPC owner or reviewer, who are obligated to contact a participant's management when serious violations of the IBM or IBMPC rules occur. It does not, moreover, supercede any of IBM's formal rules, under which other individuals have similar obligations. It does, however, provide an accepted path through which the vast .* majority of problems that occur on IBMPC are successfully and efficiently resolved.

4 Herb suggests that a Farrell essay "Knowledge, Consensus, and .* Rhetorical Theory, bears on this point.
5 None of which have been much of a problem on IBMPC anyway. This reflects, to a very large extent, the culture of IBM, in which such behavior has always been regarded as unacceptable. On those rare occasions when the IBMPC administrators have encountered such language, social pressure on the appender from other IBMPC participants usually results in the modification of the append before the IBMPC reviewer even sees it. Consistent enforcement of the expectation of expression with business courtesy and good taste has, however, undoubtedly reduced the use of unacceptable language on the facility.

One notes that the IBM experience in this area is not unique. One can point to any number of academic computer conferencing facilities (COMSERVE is certainly an example) where inappropriate language is very much the exception. Neither, however, is it general. One can also point to any number of non-IBM computer conferencing facilities in which rude language is the norm.