Censorship and the Underground Phantomgreenspun.com : LUSENET : ASD : One Thread |
I have been visiting the Rocky Mountain Forum (http://www.somwthingcool.com/www/rmhwwwboard/wwwboard.html). It is supposed to be open to all Rocky Mountain Horse enthusiasts. There have been some questions about ASD, blood typing, when to tell if a horse is mature enough to train, etc. that I felt I could have some input on.Well, I made reference to the fact that my stallion, a son of Clemon's Tim, would have had to be gelded if he were registered with the RMHA, but the KMSHA allowed him to be registered as a stallion. I said that I believed the RMHA was wrong on this (had his mother been registered early enough, she could have been a foundation mare). I said this was a narrow viewpoint on the RMHA's part. I also said that, in my opinion, the policy of allowing in a few grade mares and their filly offspring as breedable RMHA horses would not provide a large enough gene pool to prevent problems from arising again. I said that the KMSHA, with its open books on mares, was in a better position to weather the problems.
Well this Forum, open to all Rocky enthusiasts, deleted my post. They are hoping to get sponsorship from the Natural Gait News, and felt that my post was a little too friendly towards the KMSHA and too negative towards the RMHA.
Now I forwarded this information to Annette Gearhardt, and as you know, she also speaks her mind. She sent them two posts--one that commented on the censorship and one that took the RMHA to task for no longer requiring eye exams.
To my surprise, both of her posts were put out on the Forum. But now, two hours later, they are gone.
I don't agree with the Underground Phantom and his/her tactics. But I also don't live close to the Kentucky group that has controlled the RMHA. It is obvious, the RMHA is still squelching any disagreement with their policies. I foolishly thought the purpose of an organization like the RMHA was to provide member services in accordance with the goals of the majority of the members. This organization wants the members to shut up and rubber stamp the decisions of the board. And the Rocky Mountain Forum is just another place for them to control information.
I have provided the address of the Rocky Mountain Forum for those who do not know about it. You are free to visit it, submit your comments to either their forum or this one, and make up your own mind about them. It will be interesting to see if they allow any negative comments about their practices or those of the RMHA.
-- Becky Gage (bgage@neosoft.com), March 25, 1998
I have been told that you cannot follow my URL to the Rocky Mountain Forum. So here it is again, this time copied and pasted from their address: http://www.somethingcool.com/www/rmhwwwboard/wwwboard.htmlPlease check them out and reach your own conclusions about the Rocky Mountain Forum.
-- Becky Gage (bgage@neosoft.com), March 25, 1998.
I can see that my actions were, indeed, taken the wrong way! Yes it is true that our forum is open to all RMH enthusiasts, and yes it is true that we are hoping for sponsorship from Natural Gait News.. This was made clear nearly a month ago!The Rocky Mountain Horse Forum is hosted and run, by the way, in Missouri.. So we are not close to the KY group that you have spoken of either..
Let me clear one other thing up before i go, too: The RMHA is in NO way involved in the Rocky Mountain Horse Forum... YET!! We would certainly like them to be, though.. However, as of now, they have no control over what is left and what is deleted... We, the sponsors of that forum, have that control..
If someone were to post a message condemning the KMSHA, I assure you, it would be deleted just as fast! Our forum was meant to be a friendly place, and we aim for it to stay that way, no matter what the subject..
So, if anyone here has any more opinions or questions about the RMH, they are welcome to come share with us, as long as the tone remains conversational and calm..
Hope this clears things up, thanks,
Arthur Smith
-- Arthur Smith (acorn-@geocities.com), March 25, 1998.
My tone was conversational and calm. I just don't agree with the RMHA position on opening books, and said so. You said that I was too friendly to the KMSHA and not friendly enough to RMHA. Then you said you would not post my message. I find that hard to misunderstand.Then you deleted the posts of Annette Gearhardt. you could have come back with your statement that you want the Rocky Mountain Horse Forum to stay friendly, and you were objecting to these posts because, in your opinion, they were crossing the line. But you didn't.
However, I have encouraged everyone to look at the Forum and make up their own minds. I still feel that it has value. For example, misconceptions such as whether the different registries will honor each others blood typing can be cleared up on your forum. That provides a very valuable sevice. So I am still in support of your Forum.
Becky Gage
-- Becky Gage (bgage@neosoft.com), March 25, 1998.
>My tone was conversational and calm. I just don't agree with the RMHA >position on opening books, and said so. You said that I >was too friendly to the KMSHA and not friendly enough to RMHA. Then >you said you would not post my message. I find that >hard to misunderstand.Looking back at your post, I see that you're tone was indeed conversational and calm.. However, that was not my reason for deleting YOUR post in the fist place.. I thought i explained that we are anticipating support from Natural Gait News? That is why i thought maybe you misunderstood... Perhaps you don't want to see the RMHA get involved in our forum.. That is fine, but, you see, we DO! All i am asking is that people don't undermine our efforts to make that happen..
Sheesh! I liked it better when we were talking about HORSES! :)
-- Arthur Smith (acorn-@geocities.com), March 25, 1998.
Your actions were not taken the wrong way. They were taken exactly as they were intended, censorship of polite comments made within the your stated guidelines that you were nonetheless afraid might offend RMHA and thereby run counter to your stated objective of obtaining RMHA sanction. Because of that, your statement that RMHA is in no way involved the the Rocky Mountain Horse Forum is incorrect. It certainly is involved, in exactly the way it wants to be, controlling the flow of information by controlling YOU. Interesting to me that we have to discuss this on this forum, which is as I have told you primarily for the dissemination of information as it becomes available on ASD, and issues related thereto, because we can't talk about the censorship of your forum on that forum, it might offend RMHA!
-- Annette L. Gerhardt (gerhardt@sinosa.com), March 27, 1998.