chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (12/20/88)
Sigh. I should know better. This is a followup on my recent announcement for new moderators for the hypercard and DTP groups (I'm still looking, by the way). Rumors seem to be flying with great velocity all over the face of absurdity, so before things get too out of hand, let me try to throw some reality on things. First, it is not true that Sun is leaving the net. What I'm doing is a personal decision and has nothing to do with my employer. (As a matter of fact, the moderating I did had nothing to do with my employer, either, but that's beside the point). Second, it is not true that Sun is kicking me off the net. This rumor has ranged from 'using too much resource' to 'spending all my time on the net' to "not being an appropriate representative for Sun" to things I'd rather not even admit for their silliness. Let me say explicitly that Sun had nothing at all to do with my decision to drop out -- and the fact is, the people I've talked to here were just as surprised as the rest of the net. I might point out to the naysayers that rec.mag.otherrealms is business as usual for the forseeable future -- which would not be true if either point above had any shred of truth. I'm giving up *most* of my committments on USENET -- not, by any means, all of them. The truth of the matter is this: I decided the time had come to make some changes in where my time is being spent. I have a number of other commitments outside of USENET -- An upcoming stint as NAR editor for SFWA, a writer's workshop I run on CompuServe, a book project that's in its development phase, my own writing, a couple of Macintosh products I'm beta testing, and the continuing growth and maturing of OtherRealms -- these take time, and I find I'm simply doing too many different things to feel that I'm doing them well. The USENET stuff, along with some other projects I'm dropping, were simply at the bottom of the pile. Neither desktop or hypercard *needs* me by any means -- they can survive quite well being moderated by someone else, or even as open, unmoderated groups. USENET certainly doesn't need me -- any importance I had for the net went away years ago, much to my relief. USENET, frankly, isn't any fun any more -- it's too large, too noisy, and too mean-spirited for my tastes, and I spend very little time with it beyond my committments. Which implies that it's time to pass those committments on to people who aren't quite so bothered by the negative aspects of the network, and move on with my life. That's what I'm doing and that's why I've resigned. I no longer have any real interest or wish to put significant time into USENET, and the groups I've maintained would be better off having someone with a little more motivation watching over them. I'll keep up r.m.or as I always have, as long as it makes sense to do so. For folks looking for conspiracy theories or smoking guns -- sorry to disappoint you, but, the whole story is that I have, literally, better things to do with my time than USENET. Chuq Von Rospach Editor/Publisher, OtherRealms chuq@sun.COM When you're up to your *ss in alligators, it's hard to remember your initial objective was to drain the swamp.