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From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: ADMIN: "For sale" postings
Keywords: WRONG GROUPS
Message-ID: <63589@bbn.BBN.COM>
Date: 7 Apr 91 02:29:07 GMT
References: <8982@chorus.fr> <63474@bbn.BBN.COM> <1991Apr3.201752.21009@dg-rtp.dg.com>
Sender: news@bbn.com
Lines: 94

poirier@ellerbe.rtp.dg.com (Charles Poirier) writes:

}>but this is a place where theory fails us and
}>(anarchic) practice serves MUCH better.  I can think of no better place
}>to post a game-for-sale than to comp.sys.amiga.games, nor a hard disk
}>to .hardware, etc.

}A reasonable theory, but there was *plenty* of time for discussing this during
}the reorg and this is *not* what was decided upon.  People voted to separate
}sales/wanted postings from other types of postings.  If you are calling
}for discussion of a re-reorg, you should say so explicitly.  To encourage
}people to abuse the organization we have now, is simply disruptive.

Ah, but this is a bit disingenuous.  The reorganization was a VAST
change, and changed a zillion things at once.  Not only was
snipe-here/snipe-there tricky, but much of it was mostly a guess as to
what would make sense.  With such a huge change, how could one have
rationally argued in advance that one little change to the overall
scheme would prove to work out better than some other little change
after it all went into effect?  To presume that we could foresee
precisely just how it would all turn out in practice is surely
presumptuous, and an observation on how it all feels seems hardly out
of line.


}>If the right thing is being hawked in the right group...
}>I think people should just be left alone.  Do you have some
}>specific complaint about such postings, or do you just not like seeing
}>'rules' flouted?

}Specific complaint:
}Flouting of rules creates noise.  Noise is bad.  Organization is better
}than anarchy, on the net at least.  Don't post something to a more
}general group when a more specific group exists for that exact purpose.

Again, this is disingenuous.  Flouting of rules DOESNT necessarily
create 'noise', and what it does isn't necessarily 'bad'.  One must
evaluate an act for its *actual* consequences, and the rather
theoretical harm of "violating rules" just doesn't wash: if that is the
WORST you can say about a practice, then that would just confirm a
suspicion that the rule is bad.  If you look at my original respose
again, you'll see that I did make that distinction: if you have some
_specific_ complaint about a sideffect of 'bending' the rules, that's
great: that kind of discussion is the only way we can evaluate the new
newsgroup reorg and see how well we did [and so serve as an even BETTER
exemplar for other groups]; if you were just complaining because you
have a real compulsion about rules, regardless of whether they are good
or bad, effective or not, constructive or destructive, then I, at
least, don't much want to hear about it... I get enough of "it doesn't
make sense, but it's the law" over in misc.legal...

And that was also why I posted my specific comment on WHY I though that
particular practice was OK: of course I don't embrace mindless anarchy,
and so I wouldn't think of having said "just leave the guy alone and
plant your dumb rules where the sun don't shine".  Rather, I pointed
out that *this*specific* type of 'enhancement' of the rules made a LOT
more sense to me that the originally proposed one: if everyone is
busily discussing ATalkIII on c.s.a.datacomm (as they do from time to
time), that is the natural place for someone having one for sale to
link up with someone who might be interested in picking one up.  Ditto
for games, maybe hardward, AMAX in the c.s.a.emulation group, etc.

As for "more general" versus "more specific", one could observe that
the *specific* group will have the folk interested in the *specific*
topic, and are probably talking about [or at the least know a bunch
about] the specific program being offered [if it is posted in the right
group].  On the other hand, the c.s.a.marketplace group is the more
general slushbucket of ANYTHING for sale, from workstands to printers
to A1000s to games to anything else vaguely Amiga related , and who
would want to slog through all of THAT noise on a regular basis, just
on theoff chance you'll be tempted by a DM for sale for $5, or a 350mb
hard drive for $200.

I would argue, for example (building on your 'more specific versus more
general' observation), that if there is a *specific* newsgroup targeted
at the kind of thing you want to be selling, then using the *specific*
newsgroup is OK.  And the c.s.a.marketplace need only be used for those
things which have no more-specific home among the other groups; perhaps
you could think of it as the forsale postings that would have ended up
in c.s.a.misc.

}This claim rather jumps the gun, don't you think?  You don't pitch out
}a brand new newsgroup just because people haven't learned to use it yet.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'leanred to use it yet'.  *.forsale
newsgroups have existed around the net for a long time, and so my
observation about their generally being almost-useless places to post
when there is a better-targeted newsgroup is based on my observation
that it really doesn't hardly work.  I was willing to give the
c.s.a.marketplace group a chance to see how it all felt and see how/if
it all would work, and I came to the same conclusion as I have in the
past.

  /B\