Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!lethe!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!bbn!bbn.com!rshapiro
From: rshapiro@bbn.com (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: rec.swl
Message-ID: <45945@bbn.COM>
Date: 22 Sep 89 13:33:43 GMT
References: <9989@multimax.Encore.COM>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 31

In article <9989@multimax.Encore.COM> cook@encore.com writes:
 [someone else writes:]
   *want* to be a ham. Some hams feel SWL is a poor sister to amateur radio; it
   isn't -- and this exemplifies one reason why it's time to split swl out into
   its own group).

 This is, unfortunately, a fair summation of the situation.  Just for the
 records here is one "ham" who still enjoys SWL'ing and insisted on the
 ability to tune the SW broadcast bands in his last ham receiver purchase.
 I think rec.swl is a good idea and will find much support on USEnet.



Just to expand on this a bit.   My impression is that most swl's are
not hams and have no particular interest in becoming hams. For these
people, over 90% of what appears on rec.ham-radio is of no interest
(I'm not making up this number; I looked through the archives of
rec.ham-radio). Consequently they've abandoned this group altogether.
On the other hand, some hams are also swls (see above).  The solution
seems clear: those with interest in both hobbies can subscribe to both
groups, those with interest in only one don't have to wade through
loads of (to them) uninteresting articles.  Incidentally, this goes
both ways: at least some hams would be delighted to see swl postings
disappear altogether from rec.ham-radio.

I've gotten some very polite, but very patronizing messages from hams
suggesting that a single newsgroup should be used because the
rec.ham-radio environment will help swl's "grow up" to become hams. As
if swl's are somehow not fully developed.  This *is* a prevalent
attitude, and it's one of the reasons why so few swl postings see the
light of day on rec.ham-radio.