coleman@unisoft.UUCP (10/28/87)
A historical note first: for those of you not familiar with the history of info-future, it was originally a mailing list kept by Barry Shein. I think going back to a mailing list is a bit premature at this time: sure, the signal to noise ratio of the "UUCP - USSR" topic is much less then that which most of were used to in the mailing list, but the topic is almost a religious one, and thus not subject to reason. My hope is that it will fade, given time. Given the nature of a news group, it is more likely to have this problem, and we will probably see it again(and those who didn't expect it, I think we're being a bit naive about news groups in general). What we need to do is decide what this news group is actually about. I think comments/topics that are obviously political should be frowned on. When people cross the line, we should deluge them with *mail*(not news), stating that we think they are drifting off the proper type of topic for this group. We should first at least *try* some other solutions, rather then just packing our bags and going back were we came from. Messages with the words "right" and "wrong", or "bad" and "good", in the political sense, should be red flags indicating possible problems. This is *not* a group for taking votes on US(or any other country's) policy; nor is it the floor of the US senate. If people truely feel they must discuss these issues, do it off-line via direct mail, or move over to a more approprate news group. With all due respect to Barry, and he is due some, he does not have the power to disband this news group. He could drop his subscription, and try to convince as many other people as he can, to go back to a mailing list(the previous type of forum for this topic, which I will add was *not* edited, nor digestified; I do *not* like mailing lists that are, since they have a much longer turn-around time, are harder to sift through, and have various other problems like vacations/sicknesses of the digestifier). don
bzs@BU-CS.BU.EDU.UUCP (10/29/87)
I appreciate Don Coleman's comments. My mail indicating I was considering changing the format of the group to minimize the noise was just that, a consideration and I am very much open to hearing opinions on the matter. My attitude on this is far from fixed. In part I was responding to the wave of private mail that was beginning to fill my box with sentiments like "can't anything be done about this junk?!" and "drop me, I've had it". Those who are looking for an audience are quite frankly "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs". I don't think a touch of "politics" per se is a dirty word. I do think irrelevant grandstanding and soap-boxing is self-defeating and completely non-productive. A note detailing one's views on some specific event occuring between the USSR and Finland in the '30s might be true but it's of no value. Such non-sequitars add little (or, at the very least, there is some responsibility on the part of the sender to tie it together, other than to indicate that it proves that they know who the bad guys really are.) The future of computing will have political aspects guiding its development, technology does not occur in a vacuum. The real challenge is to tie those thoughts together, not just spout off some steam which seems to have been triggered by precisely one word seen in the subject header. Anyhow, perhaps cooler heads will prevail. -Barry Shein, Boston University
OWENSJ@VTVM1.BITNET (John Owens) (10/29/87)
>With all due respect to Barry, and he is due some, he does not have >the power to disband this news group. He could drop his subscription, >and try to convince as many other people as he can, to go back to a >mailing list(the previous type of forum for this topic, which I will add Actually, info-futures is still a mailing list, although it is bidirectionally gatewayed with a USENET group, and people (including myself) do still receive it as a mailing list. What Barry could do, I suppose, is to stop gatewaying the group and the mailing list, and let the group go on and do what it wants, and let the people who are really interested in carrying on the info-futures discussion stay on or resubscribe to the list. I think that would be more trouble that it's worth though; the most sensible thing to do, in my opinion, is to go to a moderated (but *not* digestified) format if the noise doesn't die down of its own accord. -John Owens Virginia Tech Communications Network Services OWENSJ@VTVM1.BITNET owens@vtopus.cs.vt.edu