inc@fluke.UUCP (Gary Benson) (03/26/84)
<take and eat of this all of you, for this is my body> Binayak Banerjee said in a recent posting: > As far as your point about honouring the women-only guide line - I don't > buy it. The Usenet is by its very nature, a broadcast medium. Excluding > some group or the other raises visions of censorship. The news comes > into MY machine, and I posted a followup on the same. You are claiming > that your posting on a public forum is somehow private and priviledged. > I don't see it that way. Right ON! Not only is this a broadcast medium, but a highly anarchic one. All it takes for a newsgroup to start is a perceived need for the group by potential subscribers. There are no by-laws, or even guidelines governing he creation of exclusive newsgroups. If there were, it wouldn't be a NETWORK, don't you see? Private communications should go via mail. If the star-dot-only people want to kid themselves into thinking that the name of their group is going to stop anybody from reading, posting, flaming, cluttering, or otherwise trying to get in the way of their intentions, they are free to do so. Just as I am free to continue to read, post, flame, or clutter any group I care to. I have noticed, however, that the net seems to be pretty good at policing this kind of obnoxiousness because the person doing that in any group tends to get noticed and flamed at rather quickly. For crying out loud, I can get myself flamed at without half trying! Can you imagine an on-line Alcoholics Anonymous group? How long do you suppose the submitters would be able to remain anonymous? I give it about 7 milliseconds, regardless of what they called the group. Here's an idea for those who think they really need private, network style communciations: Why not call the group net.boring or net.john.denver or something that noone would subscribe to? Please send responses direct. { apologies to net.women.only proponents, boring people, john denver, the State of Colorado, AA, flamers, posters, readers, and anyone else whom I may have offended } BTW, why is this discussion being held in net.women? Could it be that as the *only* .only group on the net, net.women.only is the *only* group not in sync with the public nature of the medium? Gary Benson ========================== John Fluke Mfg. Co. ILLEGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM Everett, WA, USA 98275 ========================== !fluke!inc