Theos-Talk Archives (September 1995 Message tl00809)

JRC:

>Rich ...

>John Mead was kind enough to create a list precisely for historical
>discussions. I do hope the same battle isn't fought all over again.

After a few months of operation in the Fall of 1993, John Mead created
theos-news, theos-buds, and theos-roots, and suggested that our postings
be divided among the groups according to subject matter.

This did not take on, and everyone basically preferred to continue
posting to theos-l. The theos-l list was the general discussion list,
with no restriction on what is said.

People have tended to post to theos-l because it has the widest readership.
Some readers subscribe to that list, and are not on the others.

The content on any of the lists is open, and John Mead has showed both
common sense and much patience in allowing postings to be uncensored both
by viewpoint and by subject matter.

>No one
>tried to shut Daniel up or banish him or anything like that ... they simply
>said discuss history on the list designed to discuss history.

The theos-l list is the one that we are using for unrestricted discussion.
Telling someone not to post there, because one prefers not to read about
history, and would rather have it on another list, is a form of banishment.
We could likewise say that discussions of psychical experiences should be
on theos-buds.

>And theos-l is
>now much bigger and more active than it was then, hence even a stronger reason
>to keep historical discussions on theos-roots.

It's still banishment, because theos-l is the general discussion list,
where everything goes. If you want to read things appropriate to the topics
that theos-buds outlines, you could stick to that list, but nobody posts to
it. (Or it's rarely, if at all, used.)

>(To this day I'm not sure why
>this was even an issue ... save that Daniel was critiquing KPJ's book and I
>s'pect (though I may be wrong) that he wanted a wider audience than is present
>on theos-roots).

The subject has come up a number of times and only once has someone been
pressured off of theos-l. After moving his postings to theos-roots, Daniel
Caldwell noted how Paul Johnson had continued on theos-l with some comments
on the historic discussion going on at that time (e.g. something like saying
"I had to move, why didn't you do so too?")

>If there are subscribers that are on theos-l, and not on
>theos-roots, doesn't that mean they are stating that they are not interested in
>historical discussions?

No. Because theos-l was the first and continues to be the general discussion
group. If someone is interested in theos-buds materials only, and not wanting
to see an open discussion of everything, they'd subscribe to theos-buds and/or
theos-roots, and not to theos-l. A few people have, at times, actually done
this, until they noticed that we have collectively, by our actions, chosen
theos-l as the place to do all our postings.

You can ask most of the people on the list how they consider their postings.
Each time you post a message, do you carefully consider which of four topical
areas it should go to, and post appropriately, or change the 'reply-to' field
to point to when you reply to something?

>This was never censorship, rather simple Internet list
>definition ... without which we'd all have ten times as many posts to delete.

It basically comes down to something like "get that stuff out of here, I
don't want to read it", and we're picking one particular area of discussion
we don't like and saying "put this on a list I don't read so I won't have to
be bothered to delete it from my email".

-- Eldon