David Kemper wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...
This should be a busy news group.
True, but unfortunately some posters are/were very intolerant of
other
people's opinions, and rather than agree, disagree, or ignore those
opinions, they went elsewhere to a place where dissent is not
permitted.

It was not just "some posters" who went elsewhere, David, more or less
all of the regular posters from the days when this was a vibrant and
useful group left. Your post incorrectly suggests that it was a
minority who went of in the huff, rather than the fact that it was the
majority who left because the newsgroup was becoming unusable.

It wasn't intolerance of other peoples' opinions that caused these
people to leave, it was the fact that some people (one in particular)
posted their opinion on one or two topics (BCU corruption, weirs,
personal vendetta against BCU members, etc.) more or less constantly,
to every thread and at every opportunity. The rights and wrongs of
these opinions quickly became irrelevant (he may well have made some
fair points) as the sheer volume of off-topic (to the thread, not to
the group) posting, becoming abusive as people complained, drowned the
group.

People weren't too interested in much of what he had to say, so when
his threads on a given subject were ignored, he simply inserted his
views into every other thread on the group. Every day! Until the group
was swamped! Folks got fed up trying to ignore it and simply left.

Ironically, given your eulogising about the halcyon days, you aren't
entirely innocent in the demise of this group yourself. You indulged in
a bit of goading, baiting and downright trolling yourself. Your first
posts to the group are in the post Bennett era so, perhaps, you never
really saw the group at it's best, when it was a useful resource and a
fun place to hang out.

Anyway, don't just take my word for it. The 'facts' are all available
from the usenet archives on google and from the message board on the UK
rivers guide site. Compare the latter with the sorry ghost group UKRBP
has become, see if you can find any any intolerance there.