Despite what I posted earlier, because some people of mentioned bits if it, I've decided, as one of the ancient mariners of this parish. to try to make some sort of summary of what happened. But my memory of it all is distinctly partial, in both senses of the word.
I think it must have been about eight or nine years ago that it all happened. At that time this list was privately hosted ( [EMAIL PROTECTED], or something), and was interfaced to the Usenet group uk.rec.waterways so that all postings that appeared on one also appeared on the other. That was the root cause of the first problem. Some of us who came to the interface from the mailing list side didn't know very much about Usenet. One of them was a chap called Peter Hardcastle, known as Dral. Another was me. That was another contributory factor. The gateway between the two systems had some technical faults which may or may not have been curable - technical opinion on that point differed at the time. The problem was that threads that went via the mailing list no longer threaded properly in Usenet, which upset some of the people who came to the combo from the Usenet side. Vociferous among these was a chap called Andy Mabbett, a self-appointed net-cop. The proximate cause of the big row came about as follows. Dral was then in process of building an excellent site called "Canal Roots and Routes", which I believe still exists. He used to preview some of his material on the mailing list as a sort of beta-test. As part of this process, he made a visit to the BCN which he wrote up and posted on the group. Much of this was very appreciative, but he did express regret that some areas of the BCN didn't seem to be cared for by the local residents. Somebody else, it may have been Kevin Maslin, asked for more details so that he could follow the matter up locally. Dral responded in the spirit of the request. At this point, Mabbett, who at that time managed a Birmingham Council web site, cross-posted Dral's reply, out of context, to the Birmingham Local newsgroup, not one of the most polite in the Usenet community. As a self-appointed netcop, he should have known better than that, in my view. The criticisms there, without the context, annoyed some of the Birmingham group members who responded vigorously, and in some case abusively, both on the two newsgroups and, in some cases by direct e-mail to Dral. Dral went ballistic - justifiably in my view - and that's where the row started, and went on for ages. I sided with Dral as I was also trialling material for my website and shared his strong concerns about copyright, which some Usenet enthusiasts, Maggot included, seemed to think didn't apply to Usenet. That was phase 1. Alongside this was another row about the quantity of off-topic wibble that was carried on the combined list & group. If you think what we've seen recently is a bit much, you should have seen it as it was in those days! This is where the pub analogy, either recalled or re-invented here recently, came into play. It may have been the late Jeff Dennison who launched it, or my memory might be playing tricks. A number of people hated the war and left the group/list combo. Some of them set up an invitation-only mailing list (a) to get away from the Dral/Mabbett abuse and (b) to be a place where they could chat off-topic without offending others. I joined it a bit later. That list still exists and is still invitation-only. Then came phase 2. The arrangements for hosting the mailing list fell through for a reason I don't remember - perhaps our host was changing server and couldn't afford the space for the list on his new one. Or perhaps he used that excuse to escape from the row. A new arrangement was found on a server run by Bruce Peckett, who decided, probably wisely, that to continue the gateway between the mailing list and the newsgroup was either impossible to achieve without the failings of the old arrangements, or at the least was to difficult to do. That's when the split between the two systems took place. Bruce was hosting a number of mailing lists at the time, and felt it best to set up a sort of code of conduct for them all. Nobody objected at the time, until David Long (one of the people involved in the original setting up of uk.rec.waterways) offended against one of Bruce's rules (I forget in what way) and Bruce suspended him from the list. A number of members felt that Bruce had gone over the top. This provoked another round of flame war and lost us more subscribers. That's as I remember things. Others will probably remember them differently. Mike Stevens narrowboat Felis Catus III web-site www.mike-stevens.co.uk Defend the waterways. Visit the web site www.saveourwaterways.org.uk
