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From: kk@cbrma.UUCP (Karl Kleinpaste)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: mod.all and net.fascism
Message-ID: <713@osu-dbs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 21-Oct-84 15:19:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: osu-dbs.713
Posted: Sun Oct 21 15:19:08 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Oct-84 02:36:43 EDT
Organization: Society for the Advancement of Raw Weirdness
Lines: 82

----------
>From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Zonker T. Chuqui)
>> == amdahl!gam
>...
>> As for "anything that forces people to unsubscribe to a group", that
>> seems to include "anything that I don't want to read because I disagree
>> with it."  This is exactly what was/is happening in net.motss.
>Maybe for you, but I don't think that is the majority viewpoint. With the
>case of net.motss, many people simple get VERY tired of constantly having
>their sexual alignments being challenged and bombarded. It does wonders for
>your self image. Imagine being the only smoker in a room of fanatics.
>Imagine being the only meat eater in a room of vegetarians. Wouldn't you
>eventually get tired of the harrasement?
----------
I find this extremely interesting, because it reflects on a similar
occurrence in the recent past in net.religion.  A group of Christian
participants and readers of net.religion got to the point where they
just didn't bloody well want to see all the constant attack which goes
on there.  A lot of these Christians were unsubscribing because of it.
The probability of being able to create mod.religion (or some subgroup
of net.religion) was thought to be zero, so we have created a mailing
list for ourselves.  It's alive, functioning quite well, and currently
serves a little over 30 people; we tend to gain new people in short
bursts of 3 or 4.  There's no particular organization to it, no real
moderation (though we made an attempt at it which seems to have failed;
it wasn't really needed anyway, I guess), and the arguments that go on
are generally quite calm and well done.

There were other reasons for creating the mailing list as well, which
are similar in spirit though certainly not detail to why mod.motss was
created.  We felt that we needed a place where we could go to discuss
things important to us as a group without having to defend ourselves
repeatedly for the basic, bottom-line tenets of our faith.  Also, some
of the topics discussed there simply wouldn't interest a huge majority
of the net, and this reduces net traffic (mail to 30 people costs a lot
less than news to 900 sites).  It serves a further purpose to which we
sometimes refer as "internal ministry," that is, a chance to talk and
help one another without being accosted that we even hold these
beliefs.  But we're not hiding in our mailing list; the people posting
to net.{religion,origins,whatever} are evidence of that.

Things have been a bit quiet in our mailing list for the past month or
so, but periodically something will come up that starts a lively
discussion, and quite a bit of traffic can be generated over short
periods of time.

Personally, I don't care what happens with {net,mod}.{singles,motss},
because I don't read any of them, and as long as all net.* groups
aren't replaced with mod.* groups, I'm not going to worry about it.
But I must say that I don't care for moderated groups in general, at
least in the sense in which they are moderated on the Usenet.  It seems
to me that if you've got a (relatively) small group of seriously
interested parties involved in some topic, that group would be much
better off if they were to create their own (semi-?)permanent mailing
list among themselves, rather than create an enforced-but-public
"moderated" group.

----------
>> except that where YOU draw the line might be different
>> than where I would, which is my point.  Leave the editing of newsgroups
>> to me and my 'n' key, and I'll be happy.
>I think I said this before-- not everone has the time or the patience to
>use the 'n' key. My hope is to remove as many of the 'automatic' n-key 
>messages from the group so that you can make intelligent choices about what
>you want to read. I've found myself (and I'm not unique) going into n-key
>mode-- there is so much stuff that I just 'n' everything until I realize
>that I've moved past a couple of articles I DID want to see. If I reduce
>the noise, I'll be more aware (and willing) to look at what is left.
----------
Good point.  No, you're not unique; I periodically unsubscribe from
net.religion because I get tired of n-keying too many things.  That's
what the mailing list has provided: a place where I don't have to worry
about the problems of n-keying things quite so often, but it didn't
have to affect the general Usenet public to get to a suitable solution.
(Nor did we have to deal with the outrage of the Usenet public in
setting ourselves up in this way; note the fact that the argument even
exists over the creation of mod.{motss,singles}.)  I would suggest that
the people in the motss and singles groups try it for a while.
-- 
Karl Kleinpaste @ Bell Labs, Columbus   614/860-5107    {cbosgd,ihnp4}!cbrma!kk
                @ Ohio State University 614/891-5058        cbosgd!osu-dbs!karl
                                                     karl.Ohio-State@Rand-Relay