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