On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:29:45 GMT, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:

On 19 Oct 2006 17:11:57 -0700, "Chuck Gould"
wrote:


Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:

Just to prove a point, I went to the alt.civil.war.usa newsgroup for a
quick sampling.

In just one minute I had the following headers:

Clash of bigots continues
Laura Bush murdered her favorite boyfriends
The one trillion dollar war
Meshuga ****tard Ohara
Neo Conservatives in the news
Bassy the bigot exposed
Homophobic bigots
Whose doing the looting in New Orleans
Death of American Democracy
Leftists facists of this era

Now you tell me Chuck - how prevelant is this?

There are times when discretion is the better part of valor - this is
one of them.

Looks like there's some housekeeping for somebody to do over at the
civil war forum.

Here's where you and I disagree. Outrageous behavior should not be
tolerated simply because it is widespread. We're down to just a couple
of guys with an "F the group attitude, my need to get my personal
political rocks off trumps any benefit that others might extract from a
functional, on topic newsgroup"

Do rec.boats and the civil war group have something in common?
Hmmm..........
All sorts of political fighting going on and look at the 6th item on
that list. (!)
Could it be? Really? Naw, I'm just going to think it's a coincidence

How's your memory Tom? You know it wasn't all that long ago that the
subject list in rec.boats read pretty much the same way. Please don't
tell me you don't see a difference
between a group where people have voluntarily refrained from posting
political crap (for the most part) and the bad old days here when that
was the main reason a lot of folks hung around.

No and I agree with you with respect to the generally uncivil and
totally uncalled for behavior of some posters with respect to
off-topic posting.

Where you and I disagree is that I believe that calm, civilized
discussion on topics that may hold interest to all is healthy and not
at all offensive in particular when there is a dearth of boating
topics on a slow or maybe even a dull day.

It's a measure of degree - I can tolerate off-topic discussion as long
as the discussion remain on a rational level where points are made,
counters are presented and the discussion moves along maybe even
reaching some kind of agreement on things.

I can also tolerate nonsense posts because I enjoy looking at what
others consider funny or humorous. And it kind of lightens things up a
little.

Consider - there are posts and posters here that I avoid if only
because it is useless to attempt conversation or discussion - it's
their way or the highway and ideology takes precedence over common
sense.

On the other hand, there are others here who I engage because I know
it's not personal and that while we may hold differing opinions on the
issues of the day, we can at least keep it civil.

I totally understand your point, but to me, you are confusing bad
behavior with off-topic and I believe they are exclusive of each
other. Bad actors will behave badly if it's a boating post or not -
being off-topic does not produce bad behavior.

Perhaps it's a question of expectations - I don't know.

Many OT threads can go for days without inflammatory posts or name calling.

However, a political or religious thread that doesn't devolve to same
within about five posts is extremely rare.

Could that be the reason Chuck, et al (including me), keep referring to OT
*political and/or religious* posts and not your typical off-the-wall OT
post?