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observed a /much/ greater likelihood of abusive activity from folks with inappropriate nicknames. While I work, I generally sit with two or three Napster sessions open, watching chat, often times having to intervene because ‘pussyeater’ or ‘assrammer’ decided it would be neat to start flooding curse words in a public channel.” Since it was taking months to hire enough trusted moderators, he wrote that “we have to seek additional alternatives to make the job easier, and understand that lesser evils often times still make reasonable solutions.” Ritter and Shawn discussed the matter further in private and compromised: Users with foul nicknames would be prohibited from speaking in chat rooms, but could still swap music. The desire for growth won out over complete dedication to propriety, but not in an unreasonable way.

Participating in chat rooms at all could require the patience of a saint. This three-way chat earned “Blaxthos,” who didn’t know he was being watched, his elevation to moderator:

<D085> do you knowledge anything about the new mp3 players
<BLAXTHOS> which new mp3 players?
<D085> the portable ones
<BLAXTHOS> oh heh
<BLAXTHOS> yea, there are lots of different kinds now
*Boyd117 (56K) [sharing 14 files] has joined.
<D085> but do you think you could help me
<BOYD117> I can help you
<BOYD117> tell me whats wrong
<BOYD117> I’m hear for you
<D085> how do you transfer the songs you downloaded on to the mp3
<BOYD117> I care for all of you
<BLAXTHOS> well, usually, the unit comes with a serial interface cable
<D085> I have that
<BOYD117> that’s not so hard
<BLAXTHOS> and a program to download mp3’s to the unit
<D085> and the software
<BLAXTHOS> then just hook the unit to your serial port
<BLAXTHOS> install the software