Xref: utzoo news.groups:13143 alt.aquaria:4173 Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!ncar!tank!shamash!nic.MR.NET!umn-cs!nis!quest!starfire!john From: john@starfire.UUCP (John Lind) Newsgroups: news.groups,alt.aquaria Subject: Re: **** Call for Discussion -- Creation of Sci.Aquaria **** Summary: alt more flameproof than rec? hardly... Message-ID: <553@starfire.UUCP> Date: 11 Oct 89 16:08:27 GMT References: <20538@gryphon.COM> <35239@apple.Apple.COM> <2660@cpoint.UUCP> Organization: Starfire Consultings Services, Mpls., MN Lines: 56 In article <2660@cpoint.UUCP>, alien@cpoint.UUCP (Alien Wells) writes: > First, rec. groups seem to bring the worst out of people. They are dominated > with long flame-war threads. They are frequently subjected to cross-posting > wars. ... ... > Second, sci. groups are often not as formidable as I had imagined. They vary > from quite serious (like sci.physics) to virtually total fluff dominated by > college students (like sci.physics.fusion). All in all, I was much less > impressed than I thought I would be. ... I'm sorry Alien, but I just don't buy your conclusion that what you observed was a result of where in the hierarchy those newsgroups appear! Some topics tend to collect "religious" adherents and "religious" intolerants regardless of where in the net hierarchy they are placed. Do you seriously mean to imply that the "alt" heirarchy is less flame- prone than "rec?" I'm sorry, but that makes me smile (pleasantly :-). I do not believe that the reason for the high-quality of the group has been where it is in the hierarchy, but simply the subject matter. Yes, I suspect we will pick up a few weemby posters when we go mainstream, but that would happen in either hierarchy. The people that buy a betta and put in a bowl as an immobile dog probably won't have the level of interest to bother us. If they wanted to do serious things with fish, they wouldn't be keeping a betta bowl, and if they are changing their focus, I would think they would be ideal contributors and learners who could profit from the group more than any others. In my idealistic moments, I could even hope that we might open a few eyes. That doesn't mean that I don't care which hierarchy we join. However, I feel the value of going mainstream outweighs my taxonomic prejudices. Being rather a hopeless idealist, I say we go "rec" because that is where we belong, and I don't think that we will be any more flame-prone in "rec" than in "alt". However, I would certainly not vote against a "sci.aq*" group. I believe that the reason we have been a high-quality group is because the aquarium hobby takes a sort of serious, determined mind-set to be successful, and that just so happens to be the same sort of mindset needed for good net newsgroups. We are profitting from a happy coincidence that most groups do not enjoy. I have a hard time imagining a flame-war developing over whether or not to use airstones in your uplift tubes... There is also the fact that successful aquariists (another possible group name? just kidding...) are not hatched overnight -- it takes patience and judicious use of resources to even get started right. These are not characteristics that I would use to describe the high-volatility and high-flammability crowd. I admit, however, that these are merely conjectures on my part, and I have no hard data to "prove" or pretend to "conclude" anything. P.S. To the poster who called the "sci" proponents pig-headed, and then went on to say that he would uneqivocally vote against a "sci.aq*" group: Nuts. Your hypocrisy is showing. Do you read what you write? -- John Lind, Starfire Consulting Services E-mail: john@starfire.UUCP USnail: PO Box 13001, Mpls MN 55414