Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 09:20:28 +0100 From: Paul Robinson <paul@akita.co.uk> To: "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@blarg.net> Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: On holy wars and a plea for peace Message-ID: <20011024092028.D14989@jake.akitanet.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <7epu7ehyvj.u7e@localhost.localdomain>; from swear@blarg.net on Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 01:42:24PM -0700 References: <xzppu7e33ry.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <7epu7ehyvj.u7e@localhost.localdomain>
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On Oct 23, "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@blarg.net> wrote: > Haven't you twice in the last few days sent complaints about this to the > list? I think it's safe to say that most people don't mind ignoring > threads they aren't interested in because they can expect them to peter > out soon enough. Normally, I'd agree. However, these threads are not petering out. In fact, more threads are being spawned. Not only has it been a fair chunk of traffic, it's also incredibly boring - I have several 24 hour news TV stations, plus all the regular news slots on normal channels. I have a whole Internet with information on what is going on all over it. I have newspapers going over, and over, and over it all, constantly. I, personally, would prefer freebsd-chat to be somewhere that I can "go" as a refuge. > And "we"? Who's that? So far I've seen two posts that support that > statement, but they're both from you, while at least ten people have > participated in what I think you've inaccurately called a flame war. Because threads about killing off threads are just as annoying. Personally, I felt that the threads on religion and war should have been killed out a long time ago. I stopped contributing to them when I felt it was being dragged out into a flamewar. > Unless you can get that changed, I think you're going to have to get out > your John Lennon and imagine a mailing list without religion or politics > or whatever it is that you do not want FreeBSD users to discuss here. Nobody is saying it's against the list charter. We're just saying "enough already". Don't you guys EVER want to have a break from this? You know, you could go and discuss your opinions of religion with some of the finest theologists on the planet. You could discuss your opinions on the war with people who have actually met Osama Bin Laden. You could have really interesting dialogue with people who are well informed, all over the internet. Why the HELL do people want to discuss it with a load of BSD hackers? It makes no sense, it's boring to lots of other people, and there is no reason why you could not take the discussion off-list. In fact, if you want to reply to this message, please do so off-list. I only post onto list now to show that there really is support for the sentiment shown in the previous post. > Lennon can imagine a world without conflicting opinions, but the rest > of us need to learn to live with it in a state of peace (and not by > stifling all exchange of opinion or hauling each other into courts). Nobody objects to that, just dragging it out on a list that is supposed to be mildly entertaining (no, that's not in the charter, but it should be in the spirit of the list), with a realtively small group of people who could easily now take the discussion off-list helps this list or anybody on it. Perhaps it would be a good idea for people to remember a few things - I once knew a landlord of a pub who had three areas of conversation he would ban drunk people from having discussions on - religion, politics and sport. He did this, because he knew that if you started a discussion on any of them, especially whilst drunk, you were going to end up in a huge row at the least and most probably in a fight. It's a good rule of thumb. When you first meet somebody, initiating a conversation in any of those three areas is a bad way to start your relationship. In addition, you're going to be causing anxiety and to some extent apathy towards your sentiments if you discuss those topics outside of the right context. Just because the list charter says you can discuss those topics, doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good idea to do so. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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