Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Flaming and Such
From: jms@carat.arizona.edu (A virtually vegetal non-entity)
Date: 30 Dec 1992 12:05 MST  
Reply-To: jms@Arizona.EDU
Distribution: world,local
Organization: University of Arizona MIS Department - Mosaic Group
X-Lunar-Date: 4 days, 14 hours, 11 minutes since the new moon
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.50A   

In article <725616013.AA00000@blkcat.UUCP>, Paul.Robinson@f417.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Paul Robinson) writes...

>I for one am getting goddamn sick and tired of listening to all the 
>flaming and criticism of people.  If you don't like someone's comments, 
>do us *all* a favor and do it through E-Mail.  If someone says something 
>totally stupid, *please* don't waste bandwidth to tell people that 
>they said something stupid; tell *them*.
> 
>Maybe you don't like someone asking for a piece of information in 
>a way that - in your opinion - they should know the information or 
>know how to find it.  It is *not necessarily* a criminal offense for 
>someone not to know a critical piece of information related to their 
>work in question:

[examples of people having problems at work/school/home which justifies
them failing to do their own research and screaming for wild help from
comp.os.vms instead]

Well, I'll reply to that one.  

There was a time---and it was not too long ago---when I read every
single message on comp.os.vms.  At that time, the volume was in the
10 to 20 messages per day range.  I was also able to take the time
to respond to messages, and learned a lot from the entire experience.
I even wrote the first comp.os.vms FAQ.

Over the past 9 months, comp.os.vms has become a high-volume, high-noise,
low-quality newgroup.  This stems, in a large part, from the type of
question which Mssrs. Lydick and Gavron (and others) are taking exception
to.  This makes comp.os.vms, for all intents and purposes, useless to
me.  This makes me angry, because I see that a bunch of rank amateurs with
problems (such as you've described) running to comp.os.vms to get simple
solutions, wasting everybody's time but their own---which may already have
been whittled away by inefficient problem-solving techniques.  

I think that the flames you see are the result of this anger.  In fact,
when someone who hasn't contributed information to the general pool
responds to the flames by saying "leave me off," I think that the flames
have actually accomplished their goal: reducing the number of readers of
comp.os.vms.  

Fortunately, there are other avenues for non-amateurs to do problem solving
and sharing, such as the vmsnet hierarchy.  Personally, I'm glad that
vmsnet doesn't have a wide distribution, because its signal-to-noise ratio
is about as good as it ever gets on Usenet.  I find it an incredibly useful
tool for learning about VMS and related products.

As it is, comp.os.vms looks like the confused advising the incompetent.  I
predict that, unless the volume goes down and the quality goes up, the
expertise of answerers, and therefore questioners, will continue to decline
until it reaches some entropic noise level above absolute zero. 

So the purpose of this message?  Well, it serves only to make me feel
better.  Because the worst question-askers, the ones who inspire the
greatest flame-fest responses, are not regular readers of the group, and
whatever good advice I (or Arne, or Carl, or anyone) can give about how to
ask questions simply won't be seen by the inconsiderate and idiotic folk
who see "comp.os.vms" and immediately dive in without testing the waters.

To return to the original post:

>Can we have a little less flaming around here?

Why?  I see no incentive for the flamers, who enjoy their rhetorical
compositions, to cease.  Can you provide one?  

Joel M Snyder, 1103 E Spring Street, Tucson, AZ, 85719 
Phone: 602.882.4094 (voice) .4095 (FAX) .4093 (data)
BITNET: jms@Arizona  Internet: jms@arizona.edu  SPAN: 47541::telcom::jms
Yow!  It's a hole all the way to downtown Burbank!