Joe,

When you are right, you are so right!

My boat is sleeping under a tarp until spring.
I will be off the group until I am boating again.

Mark Browne


"Joe Parsons" wrote in message
...
I've been hanging out here off and on for quite some time. I've met some
good
people, made some friends, learned some things--even about boating--and, I
hope,
have contributed positively to this virtual community.

It's well nigh impossible to avoid off-topic chatter in unmoderated
newsgroups,
and I don't think it's necessary to limit posts to topics that strictly
involve
boating. When we hang around the docks and marinas IRL, we certainly
discuss
many topics there.

I have never complained about the "signal to noise ratio" in rec.boats.
It
would be hypocritical of me to do so, since I often post about things that
depart from the nominal topic of the newsgroup. What I *have* complained
about--obviously with no effect--is the consistently rancorous tone of
many of
these "discussions." If you identify yourself as "conservative," anyone
holding
a different view is somehow morally deficient, unpatriotic, irresponsible,
even
of questionable sexual orientation. If you consider yourself a "liberal,"
those
others are "right wing trash," warmongers, liars, exploiters, fascists and
worse.

These "discussions" are not about politics, at all. They are about saying
whatever you can think of to insult, demean and degrade the other "side."
"Liberals" are accused of desiring the failure of our country's economy so
as to
further their party's political agenda; "conservatives" are said to be
cynically
aligning themselves with a war that was initiated for financial gain.

Know what? There's some merit to each of these beliefs; people of good
will and
patriotism can and do believe that the current administration's course and
policies are justified and correct. And people of good will and
patriotism also
happen to believe just the opposite. But here, where the combatants are
for the
most part masked in comforting anonymity, there is a near-perfect lack of
civility. That's understandable, given that the constraints in
face-to-face
conversation that act as a sort of governor in "real life" don't exist
here.

Newsgroup veterans will say, "Just ignore the people and threads you don't
like," and they'd be right--but the sheer volume of these consistently
nasty
threads creates a certain kind of atmosphere that is almost palpable. And
there
is a certain kind of morbid fascination that seems to drive us--any of
us--to
read some of these threads, if only to see just how far they will descend.

I am every bit as guilty as anyone else of perpetrating (and perpetuating)
these
threads. Sure, my complaints are somewhat general--about the chronic
logical
fallacies, factual errors (especially about certain aspects of finance),
and the
fact that this kind of bickering serves only to reveal more unsavory
aspects of
people's personality than we might like to see.

Yesterday, there was a post from an anonymous, thoroughgoing coward,
attacking
one of the regular participants here in the crudest personal terms. It is
clear
that this person--probably another rec.boats "regular" posting from an
anonymous
remailer--holds a different political view from the target of his abuse,
even
though his screeds are purely personal, delivered while cowering behind
his
remailer.

People like this are part of the Usenet landscape, and easily ignored;
there is
no way that any reasonable person can condone this sort of behavior. Yet
in
that thoroughly ridiculous thread, there were posts from other people who
identify themselves as being of the opposite political view from the
target of
the abuse--one of those even seemed (to my eye) to relish the abuse being
heaped
on another. To me, that's tantamount to condoning it.

But that has become par for the course in rec.boats. It is about being
able to
score "points" against one's adversary--and, having done so, to gloat. It
is
certainly not about boats and boating.

Will the newsgroup recover? I have no idea--but I do know that, for the
time
being, at least, it will go in whatever direction it will without me.

Some of you may say, "No big loss;" but for each person like me, who has
bothered to write about this when unsubscribing, don't you wonder how many
others--people who might actually be interested in boats--have taken a
quick
look at the tenor of these posts, and simply split? Doesn't the
conspicuous
dearth of boating content bother anyone? One person acting alone cannot
turn
that around.

Rec.boats has a long history as one of the first newsgroups on Usenet.
Like
most other newsgroups, it has been through its changes. Maybe it will be
about
boats again one day. I hope someone will drop me a line to tell me,
should that
happen.

But for now, I am...out of here.

Joe Parsons