Re: David Christainsen will not tolerate the behaviour of Ian Davis, Jeb, and Kelly

In news:Xns9D8C50850B805NoIdentity@xxxxxxxxxxxx,
jeb <jeb@xxxxxxxxxx> typed:
ijdavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Ian Davis) wrote in
news:hu7047$t9o$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

In article <Xns9D8BD30F435BANoIdentity@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
jeb <jeb@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
ijdavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Ian Davis) wrote in
news:hu6me8$fbf$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Friends often tolerate daft attendees; they do not follow
them.


But they rightly can protest when daft attendees can
endlessly disrupt the function of the meeting. Can I not
as reasonably protest what I see as actions here that
disrupt the function which I believe SRQ should serve the
wider community.

The question, of course, is who one should protest to. Why
should one protest to the Cambridge meeting just because they
already have the misfortune of DC?


One reason I was interested in the noise to signal ratio in
another post is that I presume there are people (like me
in the past) who search newsgroups to see if ones of
potential interest exist, to see if they are active, and to
see if they might have useful, relevant information. So if
I were searching for Quaker info, I might check out the
newsgroup by downloading some recent conversations to see
if they had useful content. If I scanned the newsgroup
topically or just browsed through a few threads, I would
quickly skip this one as having nothing useful to offer a
prospective Quaker. The chances of me finding Quaker
related content that would make me want to explore further
would statistically be very, very small, though I might
stumble onto a particular post that was interesting, even
if it had nothing to do with the Quaker practice.


That is a major major concern of mine. Someone who knew
nothing about Quakers who came here in search of who the
heck are these people anyway would leave imagining that
they were crackpot devotees of Barbara Theiring, and argued
endlessly among themselves about the weather. It is very
difficult to reconcile the concepts of (a) David is sane
(b) he is not a vandal with (c) he can't get the above.

I don't think Quakers are going to be wronged by what happens
here nor any serious seeker deterred by what he/she might
observe here. People are usually smarter than that.

I often ran across groups in my searches on usenet that were
far worse than this one. It didn't deter my interest in the subject.
I never jumped to any conclusion that those posting were
representative of the population I was interested in, or that
the noise reflected anything but the untamed rowdiness of a
usenet group, often with far more hecklers than people
interested in the topic. What I did do was decide there was
nothing there that could reasonably meet my interest, and
quickly moved on to some other resource which could.

Unlike you, I seriously doubt any reviewing this newsgroup
would be convinced wrongly about Quakers. I think they would
just decide very, very quickly not to invest any more time
here trying to find any kindred souls or ones which could
satisfy their curiousity or interest.


SRQ doesn't come up in the first page of a Google search when either
"Quaker", "Quakers", "Quakerism", "Religious Society of Friends" or "RSoF"
is put in, and the Wikipedia on the Religious Society of Friends (which you
are redirected to if you put in Quaker) doesn't mention SRQ either.

Those seeking information about Quakerism via the Internet won't come here
first.

Those who do stumble across SRQ are most likely going to be people who
already know their way around Usenet, and who are already familiar with the
benefits and failings of unmoderated forums, and would no doubt already be
familiar with spam and off-topic posts. They may conclude that this forum is
devoid of 'content' and move on, which is a shame but no loss of face to
RSoF, but most likely they'll either scan for a FAQ, or just 'jump right
in'. if someone does'jump right in' then its up to us to welcome them,
explain the 'lay of the land' and do our best to help them find what the
info they seeking, even if that means sending them elsewhere We may even be
able to converse with them civilly and thus convince them to stay, which
would be a boon (fresh blood! fresh blood!).

But only the extremely naive and the very lost would mistake a Usenet group,
especially an unmoderated one, for something that is actually sanctioned and
representative of the party (group, subject etc) that it is named after.

That is to say, I don't think any harm comes to RSoF from this group being
the way it is, although of course there's little benefit to RSoF either.

Yowie


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