28 Aug
2006
28 Aug
'06
10:19 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Evan Koblentz" <evan at snarc.net>
To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, August 28, 2006 12:50 PM
Subject: RE: Age cutoff, was: Recommendations for operating system
I do. The answer is to define what's on-topic
using carefully chosen
words,
not dumbed-down years. LOL, I'm not saying I know
what those words might
be. But in general I think there should be healthy debate and discussion
(not necessarily here and now) rather than the usual "you're an idiot" vs.
"no you are" that spawns here every six months.
The way I see things you need a bridge between the present and the distant
past to get younger people interested in the hobby. Having a drop dead
cutoff at the first Intel 80x86 is only going to kill new blood from joining
because that is all they have ever used at this point. If you start
collecting 286/386 machines and join this list to talk about them the older
topics will sooner or later spark interest in something older and different.
Keeping 286/386 topics off the list will just keep people away who
eventually might have started collecting the older items they knew nothing
about at the time they joined. Why bother preserving anything when this list
and the knowledge contained here is just going to vanish after the last pre
Intel collector dies.