hutch@shark.UUCP (03/09/85)
[massage this lineage with your face]
The number of respondents to the poll has died down so I am posting
preliminary results. If there is much further mail, I will add it
in and post supplementary results later.
I will summarize the rankings (since some zealous disk cleaner has
removed my copy of the article I posted the second time).
Position 1: The newsgroup should be an open forum. Postings holding
forth anything to do with Christianity are welcome, from proselytization
to wholesale condemnation of Christians as witchburners.
Position 2: The newsgroup is for friendly discussion of Christianity and
related topics. Anyone is welcome to post, but it is not legit to attack
the honestly-held beliefs of anyone.
Position 3: Professing Christians and ONLY professing Christians are allowed
to post to the newsgroup.
Position 4: None of the above.
Some statistics. I recieved 22 letters total over the approximately two
weeks since I (re)posted the poll request. A few people, including
Rich Rosen, requested that I repost or mail it since the first posting
was damaged in transit, and I haven't seen anything new from them since
that reposting. Since they expressed interest in voting, I will add their
votes in to the supplementary posting.
I did not vote. My opinion on the what I would like to see in this
group may appear later as a followup.
The distribution of responses was REAL odd.
Position Respondents
1 4
1.5 1
2 10
2.5 1
3 4
The professed religious beliefs of the voters seems to be unrelated to
how the voting went. I got requests from some of the most ardent Christians
who want position 1, and from professed non-Christians who wanted position 3.
The most common comments on position 2 held in common that open forum is a
necessity for a REAL newsgroup, but that IN THIS NEWSGROUP we should not
question the validity of the underlying assumptions of Christianity.
Pithy quotes from the votes come below. I stripped names from them.
I imagine that some of them might still be obvious.
Hutch
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It is my feeling that although getting away from flames and attacks on
our faith might be nice, we must not remove ourselves from the
non-Christian with questions or shield ourselves from the types of
probing questions that sometimes just wouldn't come up, except from a
non-believer's perspective.
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Definitely #1 -- OPEN. What are we Christians afraid of.
The truth can stand without our help or defense.
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I think all news groups should be open forms, whether
net.religion.christian or net.religion.jewish. Obviously, in
net.religion.christian Christianity should be discussed and not, say,
science fiction.
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... I would prefer that net.religion.christian be handled similar to
n.r.jewish, i.e. used for discussion of Christianity by Christians.
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(4) None of the above. (you could have guessed)
Actually, I have no way of telling which of the above I would have
picked, because your article arrived cut in half. Please mail a copy
so I can get to vote, too. Unless you'd rather I didn't get to vote.
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What I really vote for is the abolition of any newsgroup whose "rules"
essentially dedicate the newsgroup to the exclusive service of a
particular group, ruling out opposing viewpoints. Since the net costs
everybody something, it should be of potential use or interest to
everybody.
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My vote is that the group is open to postings by Christian and
non-Christian alike, without the flamings. (#2 I think).
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n.r.c was created along the lines of n.r.j. If the attitude would be
inappropriate for n.r.j, it's inappropriate for n.r.c.
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I like the idea of open, friendly discussion myself. Otherwise, the
group would get too inbred. (And according to some of our less-tolerant
brethren, my Catholicism would prevent me from contributing.)
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One vote for number three(number two would be nice but unpolicable, due
to the nature of both the net and religion itself.)
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I vote for (2), but I'm not too sure how it differs from (1), except in
ousting rudeness. I.e., if one who wanted to abolish Christianity were
polite about it, it would fit in with (2).
(Exactly, except that hopefully some real discussions of WHY might
occur in the cooler atmosphere. - Hutch)
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I suggest making it a forum for the discussion of Christianity, with
the basic ideas of Christianity treated as axioms. This is somewhere
between the first and second proposals. I don't think posting should be
restricted to actual believers, but I do think that the discussion of
which, if any, religions are true belongs in net.religion.
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I don't see any reason to believe any religion, but obviously a lot of
people do. I would like to be able to read their ideas, without the
constant questioning of their basic assumptions.
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i think that n.r.c should be an open forum. i will, however, suggest
that n.r.c.only be formed to serve as the equivalent to n.r.j, because
even if it was agreed that n.r.c should be a 'safe haven' for
christians it would never work in reality, since just the mention of
the newgroups makes peoples' n-key fingers itch...