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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2009-01 > 1233163224


From:
Subject: Re: Crossposting rant
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:20:24 -0800 (PST)
References: <e2fa5318-0e91-4f00-8f2f-2d8fb684249f@z28g2000prd.googlegroups.com>


wrote:
> OK, people. Enough is enough. The lunatics with their incessant
> crossposting are taking over the asylum.

[snip]
>
> On USENET, there are no
> asylums or jails or drugs that can allow them to see that their anti-
> social behavior is inappropriate or to protect the rest of us from
> their excesses.

The basic problem is that USENET, in its uncontrolled state, is
clearly not an environment for sustained serious discussion on any
topic. And no amount of ranting, requesting, railing, or other
reaction will do anything to resolve this structural deficiency of
USENET. I think it's well past time to simply give up on USENET as
the vehicle for genealogy discussions. I think that Rootsweb -
without the gateway to USENET - is the only way to revive this group.

> I will not name names, but I just cannot fathom why
> some people will repeatedly ask him to insult them, again and again,
> by encouraging his public masturbatoin. His behavior has long ago
> placed him beyond dignifying with response or engagement, as any
> thread he participates in invariably decays into crossposted nonsense
> (and they usually become tedious in the process) unless completely
> ignored.
>
It amazes me too that any intelligent person would pursue a supposed
dialogue with Hines - it's just playing into his game and letting him
play you like a fish on a line.

>
> The take-home message is this. If you are responding to these
> crossposts, you are part of the problem. Period. I would love to say
> that if you ignore them, they will go away, but they won't.

To address a "do not crosspost" request just to SGM only scratches the
surface of the problem - which is of course again the structural
deficiency of USENET which permits such crossposting.

>
> Finally, as I recommend every time this happens, if you post on
> medieval genealogy, there will still be the same amount of nonsense,
> but at least there will be threads of value to distract us all from
> the crap.

Once again, a more proactive way of stopping the nonsense would be to
break the gateway to USENET and let the genealogy discussion continue
under the auspices of Rootsweb alone. It might well be a smaller
group involved, but over time the group might rebuild itself - without
contending with the crap from USENET.

And yes, people would have to switch from USENET to the email-based
posting of Rootsweb, but that's a small price to pay for hopefully
better quality and less contention. And yes, I too post through
USENET, although only for the past couple of years - and I would
gladly switch back if it meant less crap coming through.

>
> Recently, I was reminiscing with another long-time participant about
> the former quality of this group. Significant scholarly work was done
> here and several scholarly publications grew out of the
> collaborations. Topics ranged from Ragnar Lothbrok in Scandinavia to
> Rurik in Rus. We had a body of Iberian contributors, and discussed a
> wide range of comital families from across France. And now it has
> come to this. For one reason or another (and not just because of the
> nonsense) too many true experts who used to add their scholarly weight
> have now departed and they are not coming back. Now the best we can do
> is argue about some insignificant death date for some insignificant
> English landholder, and about what name he would have had been is
> should be called by. Snarky sniping at all and sundry, and the piles
> of pointless crap. I'll be the first to admit that I haven't posted
> anything worthwhile in months, but the normal discourse in this group
> has all just grown so tedious I only infrequently have the stomach for
> it anymore, and if anyone goes to the trouble of posting anything
> scholarly, they are rarely met with any decent responses - or any
> responses for that matter if it is not about Britain. Is this really
> the best we can do?

Fortunately, we still have the archives of the earlier days of the
group, which can be a very useful resource, as well as an indicator of
what could be.....

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