Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!rutgers!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!princeton!phoenix!greg
From: greg@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gregory Nowak)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Portal flames back!
Message-ID: <3686@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 18 Sep 88 20:53:02 GMT
References: <9027@cup.portal.com> <6934@gryphon.CTS.COM> <9150@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: greg@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Gregory Nowak)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 43

In article <9150@cup.portal.com> john_f_tamburo@cup.portal.com writes:

>We're 
>our  own  people, and we're fast becoming the dominant  force  in 
>this  net! 

It seems like Portal users have a somewhat skewed idea of the purpose
and ecology of Usenet.

In article <9152@cup.portal.com> john_f_tamburo@cup.portal.com writes:

>Portal will soon be THE top contributor on  Usenet!   It's 
>going to be OUR show soon, so get lost.

Besides the obvious implicit threat, does this strike anyone else as
evidence of a "competitive" conception of Usenet? 

>     Criticism?   This  entire newsgroup is a fucking  LYNCH  MOB 
>when Portal is involved!  You wan't war, buddy, YOU CAN HAVE  IT!  
>How  about a nice posting in our internal events section,  asking 
>EVERYBODY ON PORTAL to flame you!  Ready for 15,000 flames?  

And here the threat is made explicit. Something clearly needs to be
done aobut Portal. My own opinion is that Portal is packaging Usenet
as a commercial product, and in some sense violating the
anti-commercialism rule, but that's just one opinion.

>you  gods of Usenet?  Where the fuck is Admin if there's a  rules
>violation?  Where the hell are the rules posted?  Oleg said  that 
>a  .sig should be five lines, you say four.  SHOW ME  THE  RULES!  

At the very least, Portal management could supply its users with an
introduction to the net which points them to news.announce.newusers,
which should help with such queries. It might also clear up some
Portal users' confusion about the nature of Usenet rules/"customs",
since they seem to think that only the "rules" need to be obeyed, but
the "customs" can be safely ignored.


-- 

rutgers!phoenix.princeton.edu!greg	Gregory A Nowak/Phoenix Gang/Princeton NJ 
    "Take 2*3*5*7*11*13.  It's divisible by 59." --Matt Crawford