parks@noao.UUCP (Jay Parks) (01/29/85)
I suppose that I should be pleased that there are so many patriots out
there who want to defend our freedom of speech. I just wish there was not
quite so much raving.
To listen to the fearful, it sounds as if the unregulated Usenet is
the last bastion of free communication. COME ON, BE SERIOUS! Usenet is
useful, entertaining, important, an aid to many professions, and a good
way to communicate with the Unix (tm) community, but it is certainly not
indispensable. If Adolph Hitler moved in as chief Usenet controller and
appointed his friend Goebles as the minister of moderation, my life would
not be ruined. I would simply turn off the Usenet forever.
You see, I have discovered THE SECRET! There are hundreds, no,
thousands of networks out there. ARPANET, the source, compuserve, local
bulletin boards, special interest nets (Do you know about the Hollywood
hotline? There are others of this type.)
Sure, it is impossible for me to get on Arpanet. I don't usually call
up my compuserve number, and when I do, I certainly don't browse through
the mail for three or four hours, and I hardly ever call up California just
to contact a bulletin board, and NONE of the other nets I have seen can
compare to Usenet.
BUT, if I felt the need, and if I was willing to pay the bucks (the
real problem), I could spend the rest of my life just reading various nets
that are easily available to anyone with a modem.
And none of them compare to Usenet. There are a variety of reasons
for this:
- None of the other nets have the quality of people who work on the
Usenet software (I can't talk for Arpanet, I've never seen it). We have
professional software engineers who donate free time for both programming
and moderation. It definitely shows.
- None of the others networks have our elite mixture of scientific,
academic, technical, and professional members.
- AND, most of the other nets are filled with junk by high-school
hackers who post whatever they feel like. There is no moderation, no
professionalism, no control.
If we (the Usenet community) are going to continue to run a
top-quality forum, then we are going to have to continue to grow and
change. It is irrational to over-react to possible changes which could
hypothetically have a bad effect sometime in the future. Instead, we
should address our current problems and attempt to solve them. That is
what Lauren is doing. I wish him luck.
No cute signoffs,
Jay Parks
(decvax!hao!ihnp4!seismo)!noao!parks :uucp
Kitt Peak National Observatory :U.S. Snail
950 N. Cherry, Tucson, AZ 85726