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From: rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: opportunity,the net,and language
Message-ID: <801@ptsfa.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Aug-85 18:18:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: ptsfa.801
Posted: Mon Aug 12 18:18:14 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Aug-85 03:50:54 EDT
References: <503@hpda.UUCP>
Reply-To: rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Distribution: net
Organization: Pacific Bell, San Francisco
Lines: 68

In article <503@hpda.UUCP> on@hpda.UUCP (Owen Rowley) writes:
>Dear Netland
>   So here we are , on a national network that connects thousands of
>computer professionals and there are a handfull of people who contribute
>to this newsgroup. ...
> Obviously the vast majority 
>of subscribers to this news group are just readers, I guess this is standard
>but it would seem to me that we are missing an opportunity here to take 
>advantage of a valuable resource. Often two or more days to go by with no 
>postings at all!! 

The system I am on has at least one or two postings to net.motss each day.
Maybe your system gets them in larger but less frequent bursts.

>  Look in net.women or net.religion and you will
>find a whole different kind of ballgame, but here in net.motss you hardly
>ever see responses to the few articles that do offer informative material
>worthy of discussion. Too often when a topic starts up , like the recent 
>controversy over children and the state control of Gay peoples right to
>foster parent, I see replies that consist of whining and bitching.
>Perhaps the name motss is too obtuse and there are hundreds of Gay users
>out there that don't know it exists on the net.... in which case we need
>to get the word out...

Is is difficult, desirable, etc. to have the name changed to net.gay (or
whatever)?

>Perhaps there just aren't that many Gay users out there, but I doubt that
>More than likely its a reflection of closeted attitudes and unwillingness
>to be known as Gay in the workplace.

When I first started reading the net about a year ago, the social issues brought
up in net.motss articles were issues interesting to me when I was ten years
younger. (I'm mid-thirty). Another friend of mine (who is also in his thirties)
felt the same way enough to feel he could not spare the time at work
to read through articles that were mostly uninteresting to him.

>Also from the geographical standpoint one might surmise that Gay people
>only exist in Boston, and california. ( who knows mayby its true) Though
>I suspect that once again this apparently uneven distribution reflects 
>closeted attitudes. 

Could this be a combination of a skewed geographic distribution of gay
people and UNIX(tm) jobs?

>To get back to my main point....there are a lot of things we could be
>discussing here that could provide valuable resources for us all,
>Gay and non Gay alike.

I am not sure that this group should be a resource for the non-gay.
I, for one, am not about to start explaining or defending my gayness
in THIS group.

However, I largely agree with Owen about the lack of on-going dialog
about PERSONAL issues in our lives as gays. In my next postings
(they will take a while to write) I will bring up some issues
that are of personal interest to me as a gay man.
-- 


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