David Gerard said:
slimvirgin@gmail.com (slimvirgin@gmail.com) [050507 09:33]:
The anonymous posters on Usenet are not published authors just because they post to Usenet. So yes, any editor who wanted to delete material sourced to Usenet would be well within their rights - except where it's being used as a primary source about itself.
Although in practice, this would be disruption to make a point. Why are you hardly being agreed with?
I happen to find slimvirgin's argument impossible to answer. As a secondary source, Usenet will never, ever be even remotely citable on the subject of the world outside Usenet. I would not regard deletion of Usenet-sourced material as disruption to make a point. Where we can trust what Usenet says, it is because, like Wikipedia, its information about the universe outside Usenet is independently verifiable. I would probably oppose any suggestion that Usenet posts were intrinsically interesting, and certainly oppose any suggestion that individual Usenet posts can be authoritative about anything outside themselves.