"Chris C" <newsadmin[despam] at povray.org> wrote in message
news:3a49c73c@news.povray.org...
>
> "Tom Melly" <tom### [at] tomandlucouk> wrote in message
news:3a49b723@news.povray.org...
> > Well?
> >
> > (It's not showing up and has been removed from the avail. newsgroups on
this
> > server).
>
> off-topic was removed due to consistent abuse.
>

    Don't worry I'm not going to drag this on unnecessarily - I've only just
got round to visiting the news server after a couple of weeks break and, as
a regular poster in p.o-t (and after reading the rest of the thread), I just
wanted air a few thoughts.

    1, I'd pretty much been ignoring the whole M.G. thing, did things in
really escalate _so far_ in p.o-t that it called for such draconian
measures?

    2, Why such a draconian approach ? Warn anyone the abuses the groups and
then ban them if necessary, but penalising everyone for one or two peoples
bad behaviour just pisses everyone off and merely shifts the problem.

    3, I'm glad to see that p.o-t is returning, a forum as popular and as
eclectic as ours needs somewhere like p.o-t for exactly the reasons that,
IIRC, the news admins stated when p.o-t was first set up - Threads going
'off-topic' is inevitable within this type of 'community forum', and they're
an important part of keeping such a forum alive, without p.o-t all the other
groups (particularly p.general) get clogged up with this banter.

    4, How, on earth did it come to this ? It seems to me that the majority
of the users here are intelligent, mature, people (many of the younger
members of our community often appear far more mature than some of us older
ones) and we all seem to agree that out and out flame wars have no place on
this server. Flame wars cannot and do not turn in infernos without someone
feeding or fanning the flames. The big problem, and a trap I find myself too
easily falling into, is that one persons 'constructive criticism' can be
another's 'bigoted abuse' - but, as intelligent, mature, people shouldn't we
be able to self police this problem ?

    5, This marks a very disappointing moment in news.povray.org's history,
unfortunately, deeds cannot be undone and we have no way of knowing the
future, but I hope we can learn for this experience and 'grow' as a
community. Shit, I'm starting to sound like a hippie now, so, to kind of sum
up, I'll say one final thing...

    Reply directly, email the poster or just ignore the lot - it's your
choice and that's the only way a community like this can operate - only you,
yourself, can effectively police what you read here and no-one is forcing
you to reply, however when you do decide to reply to a post, remember,
always, that this is a community and not your own personal forum - respect
that community and it will respect you (I personally have forced myself (too
late some might think in some cases (but I'm getting better at it)), on
several occasions, to pull out of a thread that I'd have liked to have
continued when it was clear that it was going absolutely nowhere and was
rapidly devolving).

    Oh, and now that there's nowhere else to do it... Happy New Year one and
all! I hope everyone had a suitably festive holiday period and I wish you
all luck, prosperity and good health in 2K+1.

--
Scott Hill.
Software Engineer.
E-Mail        : sco### [at] innocentcom
PGP Key       : http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371
Pandora's Box : http://www.pandora-software.com

*Everything in this message/post is purely IMHO and no-one-else's*

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