From: pdb059@ipl.jpl.nasa.gov (Paul Bartholomew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Amiga 4000/Atari Falcon
Date: 20 Aug 92 15:03:54 GMT
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Image Processing Lab

In article <1992Aug15.190245.17255@hfsi.uucp>, ata@hfsi.uucp (John Ata FSO) writes:
> In article <193248@ipl.jpl.nasa.gov> pdb059@ipl.jpl.nasa.gov (Paul Bartholomew) writes:
>>
>>Because this is amiga.advocacy.  There is a rather large subset of people
>>who post to this newsgroup who will exaggerate the capabilities of their
>>platform of choice and/or will exaggerate the weaknesses of competing
>>platforms.  When I read a posting that directly contradicts my experience,
>>in a rather large way, I tend to assume that the poster belongs to this
>>large subset and I react accordingly.  These rabid disciples are not
>>unique to any specific platform but are present in all of them.
> 
> Oh, so what you're saying is that I can't get any reliable
> information from this group because no one is telling the truth!

I'd appreciate it if you didn't put words in my mouth, please.  Please
read my posting again; I specifically referred to a "large subset of
people".  I suppose I should have been a little more careful since
"large subset" can be anything from 10% to 90%.  I used it in this
context to mean about 10-20% of the people who post to this group--
a far cry from "no one telling the truth".

My experience has been that the information content of this group is
generally pretty low, but not non-existent.  I certainly have learned
things by reading this group.

> I strongly disagree.  This group certainly talks about emotional
> issues and I'm certainly not saying that this group should be all
> factual :) But if all this group does is namecall each other with
> no factual *basis* to their posting, then what good is it?  I have
> seen posters submit articles which were well thought out even if
> they had an emotional slant to them.  I read this newsgroup
> because of them.  And I feel sad when I see a poster tell about
> their experience and get immediately called a liar, etc without
> any thought whatsoever.  Perhaps you enjoy this, but I wonder how
> you feel when you're on the other end? 

Note the other qualification in my original posting--when somebody's
experience differs from mine "in a large way".  Once again, the fault
is mine for being too vague in my choice of words.  I should also add
that an additional qualification is the tone of the posting.  If I
read a posting that says something like, "MS-DOS sucks and Windows is
a joke.  It takes 30 minutes to start up and you can watch the screens
update because it's dog slow."  I naturally assume this is an advocacy
posting and not intended to be taken seriously and respond accordingly
(usually with some mild flamage).

I generally try to be very careful when I post and try to present a
balanced viewpoint.  I'm almost never flamed and have never been called
a liar.  Similarly, I almost never flame and don't believe I've ever
called anyone a liar per se.  Would it bother me to be called a liar? 
Not really--this is amiga.advocacy.  I expect mindless debate on occasion.

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Paul Bartholomew          |   "The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of
                          |    many things..."                  Lewis Carroll
pdb059@ipl.jpl.nasa.gov   |   Disclaimer:  Opinions?  What opinions?
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