Let me start this by saying that things are pretty decent
around here lately, we don't nearly as many complaints as
we used to about bad content.
However, since it's come up again, I feel I must set
a few records straight (since it keeps getting blamed
on my even though I seldom post!)
SHedman123@aol.com wrote:
> I look at this list as a club meeting, where people engage in discussions
> about their cars, wifes, husbands, trips, bad food, bad jokes, bad products
> etc.
As pointed out by many long ago, this analogy is flawed.
I think you are comparing it to the kind of chatter you
hear walking around the cars and sitting in the beer gardens
and so on. Of course it would be terminally boring to only
hear car talk everywhere you went at an event. When with my
chums at a car show, we talk hockey and baseball as much
as we talk cars.
However, this medium has a very major difference. Everything
that ANYONE says has to be read by all. (or at least skimmed
by all to decide whether to delete, which isn't really much
better).
At your local car show, there is frankly always the
group you don't care about. They pull in with big block
chevy trucks and 5000W stereo systems.
At the car show, you can walk away from the less interesting
conversations and into the better ones. Here, you can only
quietly endure them. The 5000W stereo guys fill your mailbox
as much as the guy telling you how to get that last nut
on your TD so you can drive it away.
There is an accuurate analogy between the internet list
and the car show, but that isn't quite it.
The true "car show" analogy is the final awards banquet. Everyone
is in one room (like this one list) and there is one mic that pretty
much anyone can take a turn talking through. (anyone here is welcome
to say anything really).
HOWEVER, when someone walks up to the mic and talks for three
hours about Frank Zappa records, imagine the yawning and
discrete sneaking out that would happen of the banquet.
Similarily imagine what would happen if the banquet decayed into
a very vocal unpleasant fight over wire wheels versus steel wheels. In
the "car show" you can walk somewhere else. However, the banquet is
like the mailing list. All thousand of us have to endure the whole
thing if we want to stay around at all. Inevitably, it becomes
even worse as a third group pipes in trying to get the wheel
holy wars off the group, then the fourth group comes in screaming
that they have every right to talk about the fourth corner
in their colon if they want to.
...chaos ensues, from a simple little lack of internet experience
and internet courtesy.
It's very simple, and to be honest I know I have a rep for
beind much more firm than I really am. I like the jokes and
even post some myself.
But please.... before every post.... is this something you
would say in front of 1000 strangers at an MG banquet? (or
in this case 1000 strangers at their PCs)?
If you know in your heart that only a few people care, take
it to email. EMAIL is really the private little chatter that
Susan is so fond of. EMAIL is the perfect place to talk about
everything, car related or otherwise.
In reality, things are much better than they have been so I
don't want to sound so harsh. But the periods when the list
because basically useless often start with "why should we
limit it to just cars? I don't talk just cars when I go to
car shows!".
I forget the person who gave the original advice, but there
are many places on the 'net for chatter about ANY topic. If
you feel the need to spend more time internet chatting, you
are probably better served than here. Perhaps somebody out
there on a Frank Zappa list is just dying to find a place to
talk about his MG.
--
Trevor Boicey
Ottawa, Canada
tboicey@brit.ca
http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/
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