Irreverence to irrelevance

This message is directed to those individuals who care that this mailing list has slowly degraded into a usenet newsgroup. The rest of you can continue to be unconcerned and skip this message. Its obvious that this mailing list needs an overhaul. Any attempts to steer it back to its proper course of discussion have been either ridiculed or ignored. Again, this goes back to my argument a few weeks back when the noise was at its loudest, which is that it all boils down to common courtesy and respect. In my normal life, I make it a point to break the rules and live against convention. I can do that without disturbing the rest of my fellow humans because the impact of my actions doesn't reach very far. Plus I don't flout convention just to flout convention, thereby inconveniencing others. However, in this tight-knit community where the slightest ripple builds into a wave and then a tsunami, it is not appropriate to continually transcend the intended use of this forum for one's own personal amusement. When you're in close quarters, you don't fart unless you're an asshole. The quality of the PEOPLE on this mailing list has declined considerably. It used to be that Bill screened participants before they were allowed to join, thereby filtering out the potential riff raff. The community we used to have, although semi-exclusive, did produce some excellent discussion material. However, now that Bill has fallen off the face of the earth and just about anyone with half a brain can join, a good majority of the discussion at times is off-topic and boorish. The worst case is the one-line reply to the hundred line quoted message. It used to be fun to read about classic computers. Now its pretty lame reading about [insert off-topic shit here]. I think the best approach to this would be to let this stupid mailing list die out and start an alternate forum. So I'm going to do just that. I'm beginning work on a web BBS which will have multiple topic areas. It will be semi-moderated and any inkling of off-topic blather will be expunged promptly. Better yet, I may even decide to turn it into a classic BBS running on a classic system (I can resurrect the never finished BBS software I was writing on my Apple //e). That way, those interested in joining will have to take some effort to do so, which will eliminate the casual turd. I'll let interested parties know when this is completed and ready for beta. Please e-mail me (need I add "privately"?) with any tips or suggestions you may have. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Your criticisms will be answered with fantasticly cruel insults and derision. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass Coming Soon...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!