Gene,
Nicely stated.
Paul

"Gene Kearns" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 16:51:51 GMT, "John"
wrote:

Are there any news groups around that discuss boats and boating?????



John,

Rec.boats actually does, but only if you filter through the garbage.
There are some very knowledgeable and experienced people here that can
help with most any subject.

There are also those here that have a political agenda that they feel
they must share with everybody. Generally, they fall into two groups.
Many of those posting political opinion have the decency to preface
their remarks with "OT," or at least the thread is clearly
identifiable as not related to boating.

More insidious are those posters that sway threads away from their
originators intent and post here not for any love of boating, but to
serve some sort of self gratification through the vandalism of other
poster's interest... especially if it can be done in the guise of good
political guys vs. bad political guys.

I make these comments to point out that there are commonalities in
these posts(posters) and that they can, therefore, be filtered. If you
wish to enjoy newsgroups (and this one is a good example) that have a
relatively low signal to noise ratio, you are either going to spend
quite a bit of time manually sorting through the OT for the On
Topic.... really no fun and I suggest you invest in newsreader
software that will automate the task. My personal recommendation will
be Agent 2.0, when it is commercially available.

To offer my own experience.... I have been toying with a few filters
that remove certain posters entirely (that *never* seem to post on
topic) and to monitor others that have very constructive information,
but are given to OT posting, as well.... thus, not removing them
completely, but throwing away their posts that I'd just as soon not
see.... Analyzing the group dynamics of rec.boats has left me fairly
amazed at how few posters have created most of the vandalism and bad
feelings, but has given me insight into how few rules are necessary to
bring the signal to noise ratio back to an acceptable level.

Hang in there, John.... a few of the appropriate tool and even
rec.boats can be an apolitical resource for the few of us left that
actually own a boat and use it.....
--



Grady-White Gulfstream, out of Southport, NC.

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