JOAT?

[Dave Balderstone]

His web page is gone... Does anyone know if the crotchety old coot is still sacrificing to the WW gods?

[skeez]

he's still alive and doin fine. hangs around ncwoodworker.net these days. and yes he left because of all the garbage here. same reason I dont hang here anymore. just passin through so...........

skeez

[Doug Miller]

What garbage? It's been pretty tame for quite a while -- I've even stopped filtering.

[Upscale]

Maybe he's thinking about OT subjects, not spam or arguments. It's natural for any topic to change into something else complete in short order.

[Doug Miller]

Oh, well, there *has* been plenty of that. But for the most part, it's been marked OT, and it's pretty easy to deal with.

[Lowell Holmes]

IMO The content of this group is not of the quality it was 5 years ago.

Sawmill Creek has the content that used to be posted here.

OTOH, the ISP's have cut back on their services.

I only stop by occasionally because of the political vitriol manifest by members of the group. Five years ago, you wouldn't know who was a liberal or who was a conservative.

You guys probably never saw one of CONAN's hand made mesquite boxes with turquoise inlay. I don't know what happened to him. I sure liked his projects.

[Russ Stanton]

[Swingman]

Personally, can't stand the web format ... just color me too Fidoized.

That, in a nutshell, is the saddest part of the Wrec today ... then again, the country itself is torn into two camps by artificial political agendas, so the microcosm remains a reflection of the macrocosm in this case.

Another damn shame ... The Librarian is not the only one missed in that regard. At one point there was ample evidence in the wrec, and its companion, ABPW, to back up the veracity of words/opinions/advice, today evidence of sageness/competence is based mostly on the principle, and skill, of wielding WikiDAGS, instead of tools.

Times do change ...

[Tanus]

I wasn't here 5 years ago, but I'll take both of your words for it. I agree with Swing, tho. I tried Sawmill, and saw plenty of content, but web format doesn't work for me. I'm also on dialup and clicking from one thread to another is just annoying.

I've filtered a lot of OT stuff, and more than a few posters, as have many others here - just to reduce the S/N ratio.

Tanus

[Doug Miller]

We don't have to allow that to destroy our community. This is, after all, a woodworking group; alt.talk.politics is over that way --------------------->.

I'd like to propose that we all agree not to participate in political threads in this group, regardless of who started them; as one of the guilty parties in that regard, I'll go first, for thirty days. Longer, if I'm not alone.

Tim? Upscale? J. Clarke? Robatoy? Mark&Juanita? Lew? You guys in?

[Artemus]

What a hoot. The first response (Skeez) is the only one that addresses the OP's question. The second one by Doug Miller hijacks the subject and drags everybody else off on one of the usual tangents. So far there are 10 posts (that I can see on verizon) on that tangent. Art

[Swingman]

ROFL ... including yours, which comes nowhere near addressing the OP's question either.

Case of pot calling the kettle black, eh Bubba? :)

[Dave Balderstone]

Once the question was answered, why waste a perfectly good thread?

[Artemus]

Touche. Art

[Larry W]

Yeah, it's been pretty nice without all those posts of dumb plans no one wanted.

[Jack Stein]

I sure hope not! I prefer to censor my reading rather than have others sensor their posting. I used to skip most of JOATS posts as non interesting (to me), which is why I almost missed this thread. I also skip all the "what is it" posts. There are a people I skip as non interesting, but none are those you list. When I feel like reading political stuff, I would rather read stuff posted by people I have a little in common with, such as wood workers. If I don't feel like reading political stuff, I skip political posts. Its no big deal...

When Fidonet was around, it was moderated, and people would get off into all sorts of tangents. Often, the tangents would get "out of hand" and the moderators would try to stop it. The excuse was the amount of bandwidth, which everyone had to pay for via phone lines, and modems were slow, some at 1200 and 2400 baud.

My thoughts then was the REASON some off topic threads are so popular, is people enjoy them. No joy, no participation. Then would come the bandwidth excuses. People just LOVE to censor each other. I say read, and post what interests you. Skip, and certainly don't participate in stuff you don't enjoy. Pretty damned simple, no?

[nailshooter41]

It is indeed. Your opinion lines up almost exactly with mine as I have expressed it here before.

Since it is a public format, any idiot can express themselves any way they want. So if they have no respect for the fact it should be primarily woodworking, that really is their lack of judgment.

But it is easy to see that by far and away the most widely read, widely responded to posts here are by political zealots, bar room experts that can't get enough of their own opinions. I can only imagine the *whoosh* of a thrill they get at thinking their political opinions are going out over the airwaves in print, and that someone is actually reading them.

After all, their wives don't listen anymore, their kids are sick of the ranting, and in their eyes most people don't have the clarity of vision they do on any given political subject. It is VERY easy to see the frustration of many here that don't have an outlet for their personally valuable opinion or their mean streak.

The whole subject of politics has been broached here many times. But, I think the fact needs to be addressed that the screaming, red faced antics of the political fanatics are actually the majority of the respondents. Even a question about glue, a machine, or anything else regarding woodworking will be politicized in just a post or two.

So using the self filtering method, you find there isn't much to read here anymore. That isn't all bad.

When this place was hoppin', you had a lot to read sometimes, and a lot to respond to if you felt someone asked a question on your field of expertise or experience. It was fun to compare notes.

Now with it having become a political group, you can catch up on just about everything in a visit every week to ten days.

So in a way, it is a win/win.

It is easy to forget this venue and all the static. This frees up a little more time that I was spending here, and who can't use a few more minutes to do something every day? And who can forget all the time it takes to type out a measured response to someone that really needs help? Now *that* can really involve some time. Now that is all back in your pocket.

And the political psychos that snipe, justify, scream their opinions, call each other names and kick the crap out of each other (at least from their own keyboard point of view) on a regular basis can continue on with wild abandon. Since the never, ever, prove anything to one another, they are fertile ground for each other, regularly crapping on each other's opinions to start the cycle over again. Each side thinks they are the clever one, and they never seem to tire of their expulsions.

The only thing I see as a downside to the whole politicizing of this newsgroup is that one of the original goals of building a usable, searchable knowledge base on woodworking and its related aspects has suffered greatly.

It is >>>profoundly

[Doug Miller]

Your points are valid, yet, somehow it seems that most political threads here degenerate into incivility. I think we'd all like it better if that didn't happen.

[Jack Stein]

What are you, a dick head or something?

You mean like that:-)

Really though, to participate in newsgroups, you must have the old, thick skin. There is no way anyone is going to get exactly what they want in a newsgroup unless they themselves are flexible and tolerant of others behavior. Some people might get pissed off and leave because every post is not about wood. Why are you talking about granite counter tops in a group about wood. Who cares what the list of cars joe blow owned in his lifetime? Why is this guy posting a million messages with silly links anyone can find in Google? Why are you asking about (name anything) when you can just look it up in Google, we've discussed (name anything) here a million times. There is no doubt people leave a newsgroup because it ain't what they want it to be. Those that think they are going to change a group to what they want... well, they are in for big disappointments...

Personally, I like being around people that work with their hands, and woodwork is my hobby, and has been for many years. Most everyone in here is also interested in woodwork. If I'm going to get into it about cars, or socialism, or granite counter tops, I prefer to do it with woodworkers than say, gynecologists. If I don't feel like reading about GW, I simply skip the thread...