PROPOSAL: alt.best.thoughtful
Jorn Barger
alt.best.thoughtful
which will parallel alt.best.of.internet, but with its focus not on
humor, but on those rare posts in every group that show the poster put
*real thought* into her writing.
I will encourage a.b.t readers to forward messages they find in other
groups (as with a.b.o.i), but nominating one's own postings (which is
discouraged on aboi) *will* be allowed.
I'm calculating that the aboi noise problem will be less serious on
a.b.t, because the definition of the group won't attract thoughtless
followups.
jorn
Eddie Saxe
Since the *moderated* group alt.humor.best-of-usenet already exists, I
would urge you to read it for a few weeks before deciding whether or not
to newgroup alt.best.thoughtful.
Although it is within the humor hierarchy, it seems to get its share of
really good, albeit not-so-funny, posts, without the noise that aboi
seems to get.
Eddie
--
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Jorn Barger
>Since the *moderated* group alt.humor.best-of-usenet already exists, I
>would urge you to read it for a few weeks before deciding whether or not
>to newgroup alt.best.thoughtful.
It's one of my favorite groups, but I think the charter clearly limits
it to humorous posts, and I suspect most of its readers would be
annoyed by the sort of long, complicated presentations I'm hoping to
see forwarded.
j
David DeLaney
Unless you make it moderated, you'll inevtably get thoughtless followups and
random crossposting of non-thoughtful stuff and will shortly disintegrate
into Yet Another Alt Group...
how about alt.best.of.moderated?
or alt.best.of.thought-provok (moderated)?
Dave
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Tim Pierce
>I intend to post a newgroup message very shortly for
>
>alt.best.thoughtful
In that case, I intend to post a rmgroup message for it very
shortly. This is an announcement, not discussion, and both
the name and subject matter of your group are tenuous at best.
>I'm calculating that the aboi noise problem will be less serious on
>a.b.t, because the definition of the group won't attract thoughtless
>followups.
April Fool's Day was *yesterday*, Jorn.
--
____ Tim Pierce / Crazy isn't so bad. I could get
\ / twpi...@unix.amherst.edu / used to this.
\/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) / -- Mary Campbell
Michael Grubb
>I intend to post a newgroup message very shortly for
>alt.best.thoughtful
>humor, but on those rare posts in every group that show the poster put
>*real thought* into her writing.
you're deliberately trying to hide the group from new readers.
More importantly, though, I think the purpose of this group is somewhat
unrealistic. It makes sense to put humorous posts on various topics in
one place, after all they have a sense of humor in common. On the other
hand, serious, thoughtful posts don't really have anything in common.
Really, serious discussions of technical details of Unix, astronomy,
or beermaking are not even comprehensible much less interesting to
people who are not already familiar with the details.
So, I doubt whether this proposed group really has a purpose to serve.
Two cents worth,
-- M.
[Followups set to alt.config.]
--
Michael Grubb <m...@ac.duke.edu> "jerk"
Jim Jewett
>I intend to post a newgroup message very shortly for
>alt.best.thoughtful
Any group with "Best" in the name will attract people looking
for a soapbox. With thoughtful, you'll get evangelical
discussions of cyber-politics instead of ads, but they still
won't be the best. I suspect it will become one more group
added the the random-hit list for proselytization, and that
this will drive the noise high enough to give it the same
problems that a.b.o.i has.
>which will parallel alt.best.of.internet, but with its focus not on
>humor, but on those rare posts in every group that show the poster put
>*real thought* into her writing.
Right now, I've been sending these to a.b.o.i, along with my
also-rans on the funny scale.
>I will encourage a.b.t readers to forward messages they find in other
>groups (as with a.b.o.i), but nominating one's own postings (which is
>discouraged on aboi) *will* be allowed.
Uh? Why not just set up an alias for talk.politics.* as a start?
You'll get the more net-aware your way, but not the more
thoughtful.
>I'm calculating that the aboi noise problem will be less serious on
>a.b.t, because the definition of the group won't attract thoughtless
>followups.
The only way to avoid that is to moderate it, so that followups
don't come to the group without a lot of work...
After all, how many of these followups even thought about
taking a.b.o.i out of the newsgroups line? And the creatures
of alt.config do at least know what the line is for...
_________ Have a favorite group or mailing list? Describe it to
| grou...@pitt.edu
jJ | Take only memories. ji...@eecs.umich.edu
\__/ Leave not even footprints. jew...@pitt.edu
Jorn Barger
>The name "alt.best.thoughtful" is a crawling horror, I'm afraid, unless
>you're deliberately trying to hide the group from new readers.
To be precise, I'm trying to repel people who cringe at the concept of
thoughtfulness! ;^/
>More importantly, though, I think the purpose of this group is somewhat
>unrealistic. It makes sense to put humorous posts on various topics in
>one place, after all they have a sense of humor in common. On the other
>hand, serious, thoughtful posts don't really have anything in common.
>Really, serious discussions of technical details of Unix, astronomy,
>or beermaking are not even comprehensible much less interesting to
>people who are not already familiar with the details.
>So, I doubt whether this proposed group really has a purpose to serve.
My experience is that thoughtful people tend to be generalists, and
thoughtful posts on any subject tend to be generally interesting.
Certainly, though, a thoughtful post that's addressed to specialists
only will fall flat...
j
Russell Morris
Sadly, what the group most likely WILL attract is the most boring variety
of self-absorbed pedantry. I've been wrestling with a similar issue on a
BBS network called WWIVnet, where I moderate a discussion group called
The Best of WWIV (roughly analogous to this group, though I hadn't heard
of this group when I set it up).
It's been my experience there that anything that someone wants to post
that they wrote themselves is almost guaranteed to be extremely
long-winded and boring. Maybe Usenet has a higher class of re-poster, but
on average I doubt it. Just more of them.
Good luck with the new group. I'll certainly subscribe to it, at least,
since I'm always looking for great stuff to snag for The Best of WWIV.
Russell
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Maynard James Handley
> Sadly, what the group most likely WILL attract is the most boring variety
> of self-absorbed pedantry. I've been wrestling with a similar issue on a
> BBS network called WWIVnet, where I moderate a discussion group called
> The Best of WWIV (roughly analogous to this group, though I hadn't heard
> of this group when I set it up).
Hi there. Just saw a reference to WWIV and felt all nostalgic for those
days, long long ago in summer 1990 when I first learned about computer
connectivity through WWIV. Met a few female friends and visited them,
had a grand time, then moved onto the Internet and grew up.
Thought I'd just say hi to you for reminding me of something I hadn't
thought of in years :-)
See ya,
Maynard