From: tdunn@ecst.csuchico.edu (Tim Dunn)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: My experience
Summary: Again, Bullwinkle?  This trick never works!!!
Date: 10 Nov 92 08:12:23 GMT
Organization: California State University, Chico
NNTP-Posting-Host: hairball.ecst.csuchico.edu

cbnorman@cayley.uwaterloo.ca writes:
>hades@Dartmouth.Edu writes:
>>cbnorman@cayley.uwaterloo.ca writes:
>>>If Bob sees a need, and makes a proposal which is a good idea,
>>>Bob's newsgroup should be created.  If Bob has been reading Usenet since
>>>1847, and makes a dumb proposal, his idea should be scrapped.
>>Wrong! If anything matters it is how long the person proposing the
>>group has been reading UseNet. Without this time spend on the Net there
>>is no way for that person to know if what s/he wants to talk about is
>>already covered by another news group. 
>if Bob manges to actually propose an incredibly good, well thought
>out, amazing idea, which everyone loves, it should not be scrapped
>because he is a "newbie" 

Heh, I love this: I agree with *you*!  
See, this is my line of thought: "Hmm, rec.games.frp.campaigns.  OK.
What does it do?  Oh, that's not new, that's not needed, and this is
redundant.  This isn't that good of an idea.  Who wrote this?  Oh, 
Him?  He's been on for *years*.  Why is he now advocating this?  Time
to write a letter and see what's up."

Now in the case of cbnorman, the last few lines instead were:
"Him?  Who's he?  Why is he advocating this?  Does he know what he's
doing?"

>[...] the chance of Bob proposing a good newsgroup is very very
>low, and he should be encouraged to wait awhile before proposing, but
>still, if his proposal is poor it will stand out in the proposal
>withing examining Bob's experience.

See, if the person is net.experienced (IMPO) then I would suspect he
has a reason for doing this.  I would give him the benefit of the 
doubt.  I would ask him what's up, seeing as chances are I've exchanged
views with him before.

If not, then I would ask why.  Seeing as everyone else beat me to it,
and cbnorman didn't give answers that an experienced person would,
I started to wonder who and why was he.  After a spell, I asked a few
questions, and included my query on his age. 

>rec.games.frp.* are no more intelligent, or moronic, or focussed, or 
>unfocussed, than those going on in the Fido RPG echos.  
>Except.....
>There were no campaigns.  A part of FRP echoing which I expected, and had
>become totally used to, was not here.  Knowing as I did how it enhanced
>the Fido echos I read, I decided to propose the creation of a newsgroup
>for campaigns.

Here's the proper way to do it:

Subject: Why no campaigning groups?

You are coming into a whole new world.  It may look, feel and stink the
same, but it *isn't*.  I don't go to someone's house and rearrange the
pictures.  Eventually, they may need to, and may request my help, or I
may get to know them well enough to suggest it, but when I first enter, 
at best/worst I can ask "Why is that picture hung so high?"

[digression: the answer in my case: reverence of deceased ancestors.
Chinese household, where this is custom. Looked horrible, and vaguely
unsafe, but that's all I could do.]

-- 
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.