Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ukma!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!bee From: bee@cs.purdue.EDU (Zaphod Beeblebrox) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: .aquaria Message-ID: <8348@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Date: 19 Oct 89 07:02:24 GMT References: <20983@gryphon.COM> <4732@ncar.ucar.edu> <2688@cpoint.UUCP> Reply-To: bee@cs.purdue.edu (Zaphod Beeblebrox) Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University Lines: 138 Said alien@cpoint.UUCP (Alien Wells): (in article <2688@cpoint.UUCP>) |In article <4732@ncar.ucar.edu> woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods) writes: |>Now that the B.S. about technical |>aspects of the hobby and other smokescreens are cleared away we can go |>to work on the heart of the matter. ... Now that we know this |>is all there is to it, I urge EVERYONE to vote NO on sci.aquaria. | |Why am I beginning to wonder why I bother posting? There are a LOT of reasons |why some people want .aquaria in sci. Picking one of them, flaming it, and |calling everything else 'BS' and 'smokescreens' is acting far more |self-serving than you even accusing Richard of being. | | | |My MAJOR reason for wanting sci. and opposing rec. is that I BELIEVE that a |sci. category will help DETER ASSHOLE FLAMERS LIKE YOU from entering the |group. The major counter argument is 'rec. is where hobbies are SUPPOSED to |be, and so what if you get flooded by drek, that's what hobby groups are FOR'. Such a soul of tact. Perhaps what we need instead is sci.aquaria.flame. Ever heard of a group called talk.bizarre? Ask someone from there how much trouble they have with people posting what they consider drek more than once. |My SECONDARY reason for wanting sci. is that Europeans ARE the state of the |art in aquaria, and I want to learn from them. The counter arguments are |'so what, Europeans don't want rec stuff, and that's what WE think you are' |and 'distribution of rec. may have improved recently to Europe'. Europeans select out of the rec groups what they want. The chance of European sites carrying rec.aquaria is pretty zarking high, if there's half as many Europeans in aquaria as you claim there are. |The MAJOR counterargument AGAINST sci. is 'sci. is meant for serious |discussions of scientists about scientific research. The counter arguments |are 'sci. already contains lots of things like sci.military, sci.skeptic, |sci.space.shuttle, etc that don't have any more justification than |sci.aquaria to the namespace', and 'even the established sci groups don't |live up to the lofty charter that people are trying to measure .aquaria by'. Adding $#!+ to the already-building pile of it doesn't make it stink any less. |The SECONDARY counterargument against sci. is 'fish keeping is a hobby, just |like other hobbies, and the existence of such things as rec.pets makets it |obvious where to put the group'. The counter argument is 'aquaria keepers |are much more into the ecology and environment than pet keepers, it really |isn't the same thing'. Call for rec.aquaria.tech then. |[...] Even the wider distribution of sci. was discussed |openly from the beginning, even though Greg's inflammatory posting makes it |look like a conspiracy that he has just unveiled. Apparently you haven't been following the discussion. When this was first proposed, a bunch of people immediately said, "This group belongs in rec, not sci. The only reason to have it in sci is to increase the distribution, ala comp.women." The response from the .aquaria folks was, "No no no no no. Aquaria is a SCIENCE, not a HOBBY. Hobbies go in rec, sciences go in sci." The discussion about sci having wider distribution was peripheral at best, and was largely limited to people accusing the .aquaria folks of wanting to have their group in sci mainly for distribution purposes, with aquaria people disclaiming this, saying that aquaria REALLY IS a science. When it became apparent that people weren't buying this, they changed their tune to "If we can't have the Europeans in our poor little aquaria group, it'll dry up and blow away. We GOTTA have it in sci so the Europeans can be with us." |Since it is clear that no-one has anything else to say, what does it serve us |to twiddle our thumbs watching the flame-mongers try to raise everyone's |tempers. Just look at the above list of arguments, make up your mind, and |vote. If there is someone out there who really hasn't made up his mind and |wants to see some more discussion to help, I'll be more than willing to do |all I can - but I don't see any reason to pamper pyromaniacs who haven't |emptied their napalm cannisters yet. This from the same guy that wrote in previous articles: |I see ... so this is sort of like extortion? The net.gods decide that it |would be nice to have a rec.aquariums or rec.pets.aquariums for the masses |of goldfish and guppy fans, so we can't have our group until they get thiers? |This despite the fact that we have demonstrated a consistent, long-term |interest and, for all you know, the K-Mart fish department crowd may not |support the traffic? | |I don't propose rec.KMart.aquariums because I don't want it. If we |started a bozo group while maintaining alt.aquaria, I wouldn't subscribe to |it. Go check out rec.pets and see if there is enough traffic there on fish |to justify rec.pets.aquariums. If so, suggest that they start it. If not, |please don't try to get us to 'jump on our sword' and create a group for |them. And: |Richard's compromise is an attempt to reach them while addressing the concerns |that some people have about other rammifications of the naming. If you were |basing your arguments on reason instead of religion, you might have seen that. And: |The following universities offer PhDs in skepticism: | Befuddle U. | Pittsburgh Puzzle University | Illinois Institute of Conundrums | Quandary Community College | Rochester Institute of Riddles | Chaos College | The Paradox Institute | University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople | Northwestern Enigma University | Incoherent Institute of Mystery IMHO, those qualify as the types of articles he is deriding. What a dimwit. |Everyone's decided, let's just vote. Tantrums like 'if the vote doesn't go |my way, I'll try to get the vote invalidated' just make me think that |news.groups ought to be moderated. Tantrums? What, pray tell, do you call your articles? I certainly respect the opinion of Greg Woods a lot more than yours. Ever consider that if news.groups were moderated, it would be Greg or someone like him moderating it? One of the "net.gods" you've been accusing of being everything but a Republican? We hear so much from the .aquaria folks about "you don't know what's in our group; don't tell us where our group should go in the hierarchy". My response to that is: "You don't know a damned thing about the net hierarchy; quit telling us where groups belong in it." B.E.E. -- Z. Beeblebrox | "Some girl with psychic powers asked me, (alias B.E.E.) | 'T-Bone, what's your sign?'; bee@cs.purdue.edu | I blinked and answered, 'Neon'. ..!purdue!bee | I thought I'd blown her mind!" -- _Existential Blues_