Are things really as bad as some say they are here?

This is prompted by some recent postings here berating people to "leave out
the politics" and otherwise make nicey-nice. Seems to me that such pleas pop
up here, and in other newsgroups, with some regularity.

But are things really as bad as the conventional wisdom says they are? I think
not.

This was also prompted by reading an interview with Craig Newmark (of the
eponymous craigslist) in the SF Chronicle (article at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...UG5C868K31.DTL).
In it, he says, "When you have a common resource like [craigslist] you have to
tend it, or else it's going to be destroyed. That's happened in a number of
cases on the Internet. One great example is the Usenet news groups. The only
ones that seem to thrive are the ones that are moderated."

But is that really true? Mind you, I'm not putting myself up as a challenger
to Newmark's judgment. However, this newsgroup, as well as others I read,
seems to be thriving despite all the premature reports of its demise.

Despite the spam, despite the bickering, name-calling, trolling, etc., all of
which seems to me is pretty much inherent to Usenet anyway--despite all this
(plus the occasional forbidden commercial posting), I still see lots of
information being conveyed here. Plenty of on-topic discussion. Even those
with a fairly low tolerance for bull****, like Richard K., participate and
contribute. A great deal of assistance is given to people seeking it. So my
question is, what's the problem?

The problem, of course, is that some people are thinner-skinned than others
when it comes to reading things that annoy them. But unfortunately, the
prescription for that is pretty much the same as it's always been: get used to
it, or ignore it if you can't get used to it. Or, as they say, get a hobby:
there is life beyond this newsgroup, you know.

We pretty much know that spam isn't going to go away anytime soon. Neither is
the other stuff that people complain about, despite frequent hand-wringing
calls for civility and reform (and the occasional request for the censor's
heavy hand to restore order). Now, some folks recommend using filters (aka
killfiles). While this is one option, it seems totally unnecessary to me. Why
does one need to view the world through killfile-colored glasses? There's a
far simpler solution: read what you want, and ignore the rest.

Anyhow.


--
Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a
really easy way: stop participating in it.

- Noam Chomsky