>In my opinion they're a garrulous lot with an excessive tendency
>toward flaming, but that could be highly prejudiced by the
>particular lists I've been tracking.
No, you're right. That's exactly what they are, on all the lists.
> Since most of the techie lists
>are highly unix oriented, which I am not, I've been reading things
>like the local domain lists (su, ba and ca) and things like
>politics, wanted, forsale, consumers, etc.
The "comp." lists are, if anything, even worse than the others
(with the exception of "talk.bizarre", where literally *anything*
goes).
> My purpose has been to
>compare the bboard approach to conferencing with the LISTSERV's
>mail oriented approach.
>
>My general impression is that most of these lists are highly
>recreational and of little use for work related problem solving in
>non-computer disciplines.
Speaking as a BITNET and LISTSERV proponent, I'd have to agree.
The traffic of USENET has very little to do with academia. However,
if you need to know where in New Jersey you can safely skinny-dip,
there's always the "rec.nude" newsgroup. (What? Did I hear someone
say "What a waste of CPU/Disk/$?")
> Other people have told me though that
>there can be a lot of good material on the techie lists.
Certain of the "comp." lists contain enough technical info to make
it worthwhile slogging through the muck and mire. If you're a Unix
systems programmer, you can't live without "comp.unix.wizards".
> I still
>tend to feel that BITNET is the leader in promoting conferences
>among the non-computerist segment of academia, especially in the
>area of lists for, as we call them here, the fuzzies or non-science
>disciplines. As I said, this is just a personal opinion based on a
>highly biased sampling though.
Quite so.
Ross Patterson
Rutgers University
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