On Tue, May 10, 2005 at 11:15:31AM -0400, Ben Scott wrote: > Hey people! > > Not too long ago we had a rather prolonged discussion about whether > political stuff like this appropriate for this forum. While a formal > vote was not taken, informally, a clear majority voiced the opinion > that this stuff is better discussed elsewhere. Someone even went so > far as to create a separate forum where this kind of stuff was > explicitly allowed.
If you really want it to stop, I think you're going to have to moderate the list, plain and simple. The reality is that the type of people on this list are more likely than the average bear to care about these kinds of issues, and whether any given person is personally interested in them or not, obviously a lot of people here are -- and they're interested in discussing them with the people who are here. I think if you look, you'll find that even some of the people who complain about this occasionally participate... I'm not actually trying to argue that the list shouldn't ban political discussions (though I wouldn't vote in favor of it). I'm only trying to point out the futility of it. People are going to do it anyway, and it's NOT about being rude, and it's NOT about being irresponsible. It's about doing what comes natural in an environment that lends itself to having exactly those kinds of discussions, and the passions of the people who hang out here. This particular topic was started specifically by someone, but often they arise quite naturally from something someone said in a post that was entirely acceptable to everyone. It's unavoidable. Note that as with most political issues that surface on the list, this topic IS at least tangentially related -- it's about the politics of technology. In our modern world, politics and technology are inexorably intertwined... Any and all OTHER discussions related to technology, Linux-related or not, are happily endured; personally I see no reason why these shouldn't be also, even if many people aren't interested in them. Many people aren't also interested in ham radio, but that's ok here. Linux advocacy is ok here too, but I don't see how you can separate that from politics. These discussions arise very naturally on lists like this, and asking the type of people who hang out here not to discuss them is like asking the average person not to breathe, or at least like asking someone who's devoutly religious not to talk about God. It's just something you do... Frankly it's a wonder to me that OT discussions don't happen here a lot more often than they do... I remember once when I was on the DHCP mailing list, there was this endless thread about flying turbo props. I found it annoying, but ultimately I had a lot of methods of just ignoring it, so that's what I did. Ben, you have been on mailing lists long enough to know that having topic police rarely helps... By the time someone speaks up, a dozen people have already replied, and those replies breed more replies, before anyone ever even sees the topic cop's complaints. And even after they see it, there will be those who feel passionately enough about the topic (whatever it is) to feel compeled to respond to something someone said anyway. Moving topics off list also generally doesn't work. Discussions happen where they happen, and run their course where they started, or not at all. -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank the spammers.
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