A Modest Proposal...

In your own words, no-body owns the newsgroup. While the offtopic political stuff is annoying I'd oppose any attempt to censor a thread. I don't see how it could be done anyway (short of something like an aggressive cancel-bot).

Best,

Al

[proposal]

I don't know how valuable such a scheme would be. I never have trouble to quickly browse through the entire group and select only the stuff I want to read and discard uninteresting posts.

bob

Like, for example, this one?

Feh.

--
The Pig Bladder from Uranus

Indeed. So stop doing it.

Nobody cares about your beliefs or choices.

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture, Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

Two responses total, one by email, one posted. One thought it was a good idea, one saw no need. Not enough interest to bother with it.

There was a slightly less modest proposal a few years back about using a set of acronyms to delineate exactly how off-topic (and in which direction) a post and replies were, and to save having to read some of them because the acronym effectively was the post. Didn't get anywhere.

Mark L. Fergerson

I think people should just use very descriptive subject headings, makes it easy to skim what to read and what not to read.

Mark

That was because the proposer assumed that he was dealing with rational adults who would be willing to, if not actually cooperate, at least not actively work awards stopping others from having an on-topic thread. The mere existence of some sci.electronics.design users working together to discuss electronics without the thread devolving into a discussion about politics attracted off-topic posts that were purposely marked as being on-topic. It soon became clear that any such system can be vandalized.

The current Modest Proposal is based upon a scheme where, instead of a group of users cooperating, a single individual can control what gets posted to a thread and interested participants can choose whether they like the way that thread is run. Vandals can still post off-topic to other threads or make off-topic posts that fail to contain the attribute that the on-topic posters are using to recognize each others posts, but they cannot post with the attribute that the on-topic posters use to recognize each others posts - that attribute can only be applied by the one person who controls the thread. (That person will have to not abuse his power, of course, or he won't have any participants).

I am still at one vote for such a system though, and that's not nearly enough interest to make it worth even trying.

Let's imagine you are a rock and pop music fan. You find a newsgroup where a bunch of old legends participate, in person, for real. You would like listening to them, wouldn't you?

But what happens when you discover that they are not only talking about rock music, they talk about a lot of other things too.

Paul McCartney likes to discuss gardening now and then, and all of the Rolling Stones guys are interested in camping and are engaged in the life of their grandchildren. Ringo Starr talks about butterflies. Waylon Jennings talks about his woman all the time.

Would you start telling them to stop writing off-topic messages? Would you tell them how to behave in a rockmusic newsgroup?

Or would you lay low for a few years first, to find out what is going on and what rules these guys want in "their" newsgroup? Maybe you should wait until you have become a member of their community and until you too are a legend in rock music until you start telling such people what to do.

When I came to this newsgroup the first time I saw the names of several writers I had read earlier, authors of articles and books I had learned electronics from for several decades. I wouldn't dream of telling such a bunch of very intelligent and highly educated people how to behave, I learn the codes and try to adapt to the community instead.

;-)

--
 Roger J.

Alas, there are participants in sci.electronics.design who insist on injecting off-topic political posts into threads without changing the subject heading. (It was, as one might expect, a lot worse right before the recent US election.) Rude, yes, but they own sci.electronics.design just as much as those who wish to discuss electronics design do. :(

Sure. Especially if I myself had some measure of commercial success as a musician. If you count the raw number of electronic products put into consumer's hands, I have reason to believe that I have created more products than everyone else here put together. Not that making lots of units is the best metric of "legendness" (I personally think that elegant designs are far more important), but it is a factor.

If I was uninterested in such things and only interested in music, I would filter out the posts that don't interest me.

You appear to be confused about the difference between telling someone not to do something and asking them not to do something.

You appear to be confused about the difference between telling someone how to behave and asking them to behave in a certain way.

How many would you like? Google Groups says my oldest post to sci.electronics.design was in February of 2000 - about a month before Google's oldest post my you. (My recollection is that my first post was in 1998, but Google doesn't have a record of that.)

Nope. I don't care at all about that. Just as I have no desire to set rules for them, I also have no interest in any rules they might set for me. I think that making polite requests is far better than making rules.

You appear to be confused about the difference between telling someone what to do and asking to do something.

If you count "legendness", I consider myself to be somewhere between the most legendary and least legendary sci.electronics.design participants.

You appear to be confused about the difference between telling someone how to behave and asking them to behave in a certain way.

I am as much a member of this community as anyone here. Besides my work in consumer electronics, some of my designs are found in commercial aircraft CD/DVD mastering plants, industrial robots, etc.

I do strongly agree about not telling people what to do, which is why I wrote "they own sci.electronics.design just as much as those who wish to discuss electronics design do." I don't, however see a community consensus that says that one cannot make a polite request concerning how to title posts.

You are, of course, free to request that I not make such requests.

...

Well, in the two or three years I've been annoying people around here, I have yet to see a post from you that's anything remotely electronic. (Well, maybe one advertising your 99 dollar store crap.) They've all been snivels about people posting off-topic stuff that you don't like, except for your big thesauri of insults.

Thanks anyway, Rich

Yeah, on SED I typically stop reading a thread after 10-20 posts, because they've left the subject far behind. I don't have time to waste on the posturing and strutting that goes on too often.

Usually I'll glance at an occasional message in a long-running thread, and once in a long while I'll find that someone has either gone off onto a different, but interesting, topic, or returned to the original thread. Then I'll have to dig back into the archives to see if there's anything worth digging out.

I always wonder whether I missed something good, but I can't spend all day every day reading trash, hoping to find something worthwhile.

So I'm an enthusiastic advocate of your idea, Guy.

John Perry

I just rejected a post that attempted to start a discussion about the constitution vote in Europe in this thread. :) As long as you read the threads in misc.business.product-dev, I promise that they will stay on the topic of product development. All bets are off if you read the threads in sci.electronics.design, of course; the usual suspects can fill the thread with politics by posting only to s.e.d. without crossposting to m.b.p-d.