Re: Moderation

A post from a lurker: you guys should lay off Bill.

I suppose that I should back that up with some logic.
This is a good list - everyone is in agreement. I will include the
following quote from Brian Walsh:

"You have built a great list, full of broad minded people"

Absolutely true. Except if they are so broad minded then why can't they

understand what Bill is trying to protect them from?
I have already said most of this in a private aside to Bill, but I can
tell
that he is on the defensive because of all the people taking pot shots
at
him, and he isn't trying to be reasonable any more, just laying down the
law.
And that is fair enough: it probably hasn't occurred to most of us
that
he has to moderate the list and he probably has a life and a job and
also
maybe thinks that he could be more profitably spending his time building

something.
Most of you (and I admit that nobody has a worse attitude to authority

than me) seem to see Bill as some type of Nazi authority figure, and he
isn't - he's just some guy sitting in front of a compute, someone who
has
built something that nobody else did, and who is now being told that
although
he made it what it is, once it is running everyone else knows better
than him
how to run it.
Which isn't uncommon. But you are all wrong.
Why? I don't go on alt.rec.metalworking any more - there is too much
stuff. Most of it is interesting and some of it brilliant, but there is
just too
much of it. When reading a couple of newsgroups became almost my sole
occupation I quit. Now I have Cad/Cam etc. emailed to me, and I get
nearly a hundred postings a day. I can deal with this, often by erasing

a few, but I still keep up. But if this becomes a free-for-all, I will
quit.
Everyone wants to be enlightened and entertained, but when you want
to watch tv you don't want ten thousand tv's in your house showing
every single show ever made. Being swamped with information is going
to be a major problem in the next few years, and nobody has really come
up with a general approach to dealing with it, except to be very
disciplined.
Fortunately we have a few people who will slog through this and try
to keep a handle on things, but people who are trying to do a thankless
but necessary job sometimes become discouraged and quit - when you are
trying to cut back the jungle so that people can find their houses it
helps
if the bystanders sitting in their folding chairs and drinking beer can
resist the opportunity to tell you how nice the vines looked before you
started hacking at them.
As before, I realise that Bill doesn't always come across with a
polite
explanation or worry about everyone's feelings, but on the other hand
half the messages on here can't resist taking cheap shots at him
whenever a now topic is started. Maybe if we had a few addendums
like "you're doing a good job and we appreciate that it isn't easy"
he might thaw a little. In any case, if something doesn't change then
we're not going to have this group, and I can tell that without someone
pretty uncompromising to run it there won't be much value left after
a few weeks.

Now can we actually discuss something we are actually here for?

Simon