mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (02/22/85)
[Laura Creighton] >> The problem is that there are 2 groups of people that I know about who are >> not enjoying it. The first group are the Christians who want a nice forum >> to discuss Christianity with the implicit assumption that Christianity >> is true. [Rich Rosen replys] >Anybody who thinks that they can control and determine what gets said (and by >whom) in a particular newsgroup is in for a surprise. Look at net.singles! >How many people who contribute are actually single? How many of the articles >contain anything related to "being single"? Face it, net.singles is the REAL >net.social (AND net.love/sex AND net.personal_affairs), with "net.social" >practically starving by comparison. People choose the newsgroup(s) in which >they post their articles based on whom they want to address, whom they wish >to read the articles, which audience the article is intended for. If I have >a question to ask of people who own Volkswagens, I'm going to ask it in >net.auto.vw (if such a thing still exists). If it doesn't, I'll post it to >net.auto proper. If I have a question to ask of religious believers, that's >what net.religion WAS for. If I have a point to make and a further question >to ask on something Jeff Sargent has said in net.religion.christian, I'm >liable to follow it up in that same newsgroup. Whether Steve Hutchison >calls it impolite or not... I can only take this to mean that Rich Rosen fully intends to thumb his nose at whatever the stated purpose of this group is; since it provides him with a convenient captive audience of Christians to rant and rave at, he intends to continue posting to it. [More Rich R.] >As Charlie [Charley] Wingate had already mentioned, >there is a *private* forum, a mailing list, for private discussions amongst >Christians. But net.religion.christian is a *public* forum. >Like net.women.only turned out to be. (That's one of the reasons there's a >feminist mailing list as well.) What a moral argument: "because other people trashed net.women.only, that gives me license to trash net.religion.christian." As a member of the not-very-famous mailing list, let me say that I think it has one very serious deficiency: it's hard to get on the list. Obviously, there is a good reason for this, as it prevents the list from being trashed by hostile anti-christian diatribe. On the other hand, this doesn't tend to encourage new blood (us anglicans gotta eat sometimes, you know :-)). As a public forum, this group affords the very real advantage of a larger audience. What I and many others find very tedious is to start a reasonable discussion, only to have it seized upon by the Christoclasts who roam the group in search of new battlefields for their anti-religious diatribes. (By the way; send applications to the mailing list to: {seismo!allegra}!umcp-cs!mailJC-request or mailJC-request@maryland.ARPA) Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe