avi@pegasus.UUCP (11/03/83)
For question 4 of my poll, most people do have somewhat different expectations
from net.religion -- and related newsgroups. Some people claim to have the same
standards everywhere. The question was:
4 - Do you have different standards for other newsgroups? Explain.
- THREE simple "No" replies.
- No, I pretty much use that [same] criteria for reading an article.
- Yes. For example, I read everything in net.jokes, because the time
required to scan the subject and decide whether to read it is not much
greater than the time to read the entire article.
- I am more likely to read a random article in net.religion then in other
news groups.
- I am more likely to save articles in other newsgroups for later
reading.
- Yes. In net.religion, net.philosophy and net.politics I expect
longer articles. So can net.sources. But I want my jokes SHORT
and long heated arguments in net.lang.c and unix-wizards stop being
interesting for me really quickly.
- Yes. I *do* read the subject line for items in net.unix-wizards.
For net.flame, I read most articles until a particular discussion gets
too old (unless I'm personally involved). For example, I started
ignoring the 55mph debate after about 4 days.
- Yes, my limit in other newsgroups is about 100-150 lines. I do make
exceptions if the article looks promising though.
- I expect longer articles in net.religion and net.philosophy.
Regardless of the newsgroup, I usually start reading and quit if it
doesn't seem worth it.
- Other newsgroups - same standards, ie, interest quotient; although I
would probably read long poems if they were submitted.
- Yes, there is so much verbosity here that I am less likely to
follow an article for very long.
- Yes. I consider that articles in such groups as net.religion,
net.philosophy, and net.politics probably tend to be longer because of
the nature of the subject matter, and hence I 'tolerate' a lengthier
article. If a garden-variety subject article in net.general or
net.wanted exceeds a screenful, I probably won't look at it.
- Yes. If an article on net.philosophy is longer than 12 lines,
I skip it. I read long articles on net.jokes. Net.flame gets
about the same treatment this group does. etc.
- My standards are lax for newsgroups which I don't know anything about,
or that I am very interested in. I am much more likely to skip a
message in a very active newsgroup, rather than an inactive one.
Perhaps these are not "different standards," though.
- I am usually more tolerable for net.religion, due to the fact that ALL
articles I have seen so far are long, undistinguishably long. So for
net.religion the cut-off goes up to ~ 30 lines.
Editors comments: I certainly have different expectations from this group.
Besides longer articles, I am willing to suspend belief - somewhat - in order
to try to follow some of the discussions. At the same time, i find some
discussions hard to take seriously -- such as the Great Unending Mormon debate.
I am amazed that I still read this newsgroup, now that I have shut off other
religious newsgroups such as philosophy and politics and physics.
--
-=> Avi E. Gross @ AT&T Information Systems Laboratories (201) 576-6241
suggested paths: [ihnp4, allegra, cbosg, hogpc, ...]!pegasus!avi