From: ahmed-shakil@cs.yale.edu (Shakil Waiz Ahmed)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bangladesh
Subject: Re: On futility of religious palavers. Was Re: Religious Tolerance and
Date: 20 Nov 1992 20:52:11 -0500
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2158
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: curie.systemsy.cs.yale.edu
Keywords: Religion, Futility


In article <By00Bq.7tu@news.udel.edu>, kazi@brahms.udel.edu (Zunaid Kazi) writes:

>Setting aside the CFV for soc.religion.islam.ahmedia, I would say that 
>most of the religious threads, are usually generated by net vermins
>who wish to start a flame war, are between two or three people: the
>originator and a number of defenders.

Actually, in my experience, the general format tends to be one where
we have an originator, one defender, and a host of supporters of the
originator... :-)

>Unfortunately the problem arises when these discussions quickly degenerate
>into an exchange of unyielding opinions. AT this point readers have 
>made up their mind as to how they would vote, and any further discussions
>serve no useful purpose except to further rancor and flames. That is
>when I wish participants would realize that further discussion is
>futile. No one is listening to what the other is saying, no matter
>how pertinent or rational one might be. That's when *I* consider the 
>discussion to be serving no more useful purpose. IMO, unfortunately,
>most threads on religion end this way.

Presumably, that is why and when they end?

>The interest or lack of interest isn't the issue here. The issue is
>the relevance to the pertinent news group. I am sure the participants
>would receive supportive emails. But there has also been a host of
>postings on SCB questioning the relevance of some of the discussions.

Here is where we have a serious disagreement.  If we screened all
articles according to the original charter of the group, 90% of SCB
articles would have to be filtered out.  Clearly, if the group serves
those who have an interest in discussing things related to Bangladesh
and Bangladeshi culture, it makes sense to discuss what readers *want*
to discuss.  Now who defines what readers want to discuss?  I would
say that a flow of articles on any particular topic shows interest in
something and regardless of topic, is generally more constructive than
the occasional criticism of topics as being irrelevant to the
newsgroup simply because some individuals may not want to see them.

>I agree the whole issue is murky. When does a relevant discussion
>cross over to irrelevancy? 

Indeed, and since there is no authority who can be the ultimate judge,
it is better to let it be.  Suppose, for example, that some individual
or a small group of people decided to conduct a survey of SCB, simply
for their own curiousity.  Is this relevant to SCB?  If it's just for
their personal curiousity, then it is probably about as relevant as
the daily "searching for Abdul Rahim Bepari who passed *out* ;) from
BUET in '27" articles.  Clearly, the size of the interested in
audience in such cases is significantly smaller than that of the religious
threads you dislike.  Now suppose that in the case of the above
hypothetical survey, the individual(s) insisted on periodically
*reposting* the *same* survey.  Would that survey become more and more
relevant to SCB each time it was posted?

Surely, the whole point is that there is no authority on this, and any
attempt by anyone to impose restrictions simply doesn't look good...

-- Shakil