Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bbncca.ARPA
Path: utzoo!linus!bbncca!sdyer
From: sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: Around the world; Bolt, et.al. question.
Message-ID: <973@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 29-Sep-84 16:03:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncca.973
Posted: Sat Sep 29 16:03:12 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Oct-84 02:38:31 EDT
References: <1112@ihuxi.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 32

Mr. Musing's musing about the preponderance of submitters to net.motss
from BBN has a very simple answer.

First, please reread my message about BBN's employment policies.
Gay people at BBN have nothing special to fear by expressing their opinions
in this forum.

Second, bbncca is simply one machine out of many at BBN.  It is (at
present) the only machine at BBN which receives netnews.  It serves a
limited software development community of approximately 30-50.  Most other
BBNers (approximately 1000) neither read nor submit to netnews.  One would
like to change this, but it involves administrative and not technical
problems, as well as generalized apathy.  Also, the technical components of
USENET are served well, albeit more inefficiently, by the ARPA mailing lists
such as INFO-MICRO and UNIX-WIZARDS.  Thus, there's less incentive to be
connected to the "real world" through USENET.  BBN already has the ARPAnet.
(Just to remind everyone, incoming mail sent to BBNers through bbncca is
delivered successfully regardless of where the users' mailboxes reside.
Thus, to the UUCPnet, everyone at BBN resides on bbncca.)

Like every place, the majority do not read the news, a smaller group
reads the news, but does not post, and there is a smaller contingent
which posts articles regularly.  Of this contingent, three or four of us
are gay, and post articles to net.motss.

The only thing that is "remarkable" about this is the testament
of tolerance which every workplace should display.  It's a shame
that it is "remarkable" at all.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
{decvax,linus,ima}!bbncca!sdyer
sdyer@bbncca.ARPA