Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!bbn!bbn.com!cosell
From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Enough is enough
Message-ID: <44541@bbn.COM>
Date: 21 Aug 89 12:33:17 GMT
References: <15113@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <6457@ux.cs.man.ac.uk>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 35

In article <6457@ux.cs.man.ac.uk> dente@els.ee.man.ac.uk (Colin Dente) writes:
}In article <15113@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> jarvis@northstar.dartmouth.edu (Mark Alexander Robinson) writes:
}>
}>In the past week, I have been flamed unnecessarily, both through net mail and
}>through the news system, for asking what I considered a very valid question,
}>and which no one seems to have a specific answer for.
}
}Right shitheads - you've done it now - thanks to your highly useful 
}contributions to this group in the form of flames, both public, and 
}(apparently) private you have succeeded in scaring off our first reader.
}
}REMEMBER - this group is the place for new users (and, for that matter, old
}users) to come to ask questions.  If you can give a reasonable,
}informed reply to a question, then by all means post it; if you just
}feel like exercising your ego by flaming some poor innocent - then
}just fuck off will you? 

On the other hand, what more important lesson for a new user to learn?
Human nature is what it is, and if only a tiny percentage of usenetters
are @ssholes, that percentage times the size of the net (did someone
recently estimate that we're getting on to a million?) means that there
is LOTS of crap waiting to flow with the least provocation.

This is hardly the most uncivil of the newsgroups, and as our newusers
will quickly discover, there is no place to hide: they can retreat from
n.n.q, but the flame throwers are not so easily hidden from and will
dog them whereever they dare to post.  Aside from strictly technical
questions (for which, the newuser will discover, you can be flamed just
for ASKING, also... flamers know no bounds!), if newusers learn NOTHING
more from n.n.q than that there are a LOT of socially maladjusted
cretins out there, and, of course, that there are also a fair number of
good folk, and you have to balance (and learn to defend yourself) this
group will be a roaring success.

  /Bernie\