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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!hao!cires!nbires!opus!rcd
From: rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: re serious proposals to abolish
Message-ID: <1010@opus.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 8-Jan-85 02:31:44 EST
Article-I.D.: opus.1010
Posted: Tue Jan  8 02:31:44 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 10-Jan-85 07:02:19 EST
References: <802@hound.UUCP>
Organization: NBI,Inc, Boulder CO
Lines: 26

A comment on a suggestion to abolish net.general:
> In my opinion, one of the big sources of trouble in our society is
> the mentality that says: "I don't like it, therefore it should be
> banned/abolished/destroyed etc.". If you don't LIKE net.general,
> then don't READ net.general.

In my opinion, the suggestion to abolish net.general was a suggestion to
get rid of something that doesn't work and hasn't worked particularly well
for a long time.  It has little or nothing to do with any general social
malaise but a lot to do with general misunderstanding of net.general.

Based on what's submitted, I'd like to read the 20% or so that actually
belongs there, but as far as I can tell, there's no option to readnews,
vnews, or even rn, which allows me to specify "read only articles submitted
by people clever enough to find out what the newsgroup is for before they
submit an article to it."

I don't necessarily care to see it abolished--but we really oughta either
fix it or throw it away, and it's damned tough to fix it when there are so
many sites that won't spend 30 seconds educating a new netnews user even
enough to keep him from submitting all manner of crap to net.general.  If
you don't think it should be abolished, why not suggest how to get it used
for its intended and stated purpose?
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
   ...Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile.