> I do not know Eric Thomas, but I consider > him a serious and talented artist, and I very much appreciate his continuing > presence and participation on LstOwn-L. So do I. I've enjoyed arguing with Eric on this list in the past on topics like bitnet vs internet, and I considered jumping into the religious war the other day when he was putting down my favorite OS (unix). It's fun to debate with Eric because of his candor (polite word choice there :-) and because I find it somehow funny to think of an English professor with absolutely no technical background of any kind arguing with the best-known computer genius in NetLand. I want to make it clear, however, that at no point have I ever had anything but the highest respect for Eric's skills and, in one sense even more important for us, the enormous amount of time and energy he has devoted to giving freely to us all. He gives us his products, he gives us answers, and he gives us funny (or at least I find most of them funny) harangues. > (a) most basic questions posted to LstOwn-L get answered fairly quickly and > well and don't seem to be resented by anyone on this list (in fact, we seem > to collectively be a pretty friendly lot, anxious to be helpful to one > another), This is true. I have never been made to feel unwelcome or stupid even when asking very stupid questions. Ironically, I think I've asked "dumber" questions in recent months than I did when I first became a listowner a couple of years ago. Part of that may be because at first I was intimidated at the thought of speaking up on a list like this one. I knew that I was almost certainly the least knowledgeable listowner in existence and was afraid that my questions would annoy the other subscribers. I read the list logs for the previous three months and read as many of the listserv documents as I could find before I ever asked anything on the list. I fear I've become a bit lazier now. I've forgotten some of what I read in the documents two years ago, and I tend to come straight to the list with dumb questions before really thinking the question through. > and (c) creation of a 'junior LstOwn-L' list might dilute the resource we > already have by denying the 'junior LstOwn-L' subscribers of the experience > represented by longer-term LstOwn-L subscribers *and* by denying those I hope that this list is not separated into "junior" and "senior." Although presumably we could lurk on the other division of the list, most of us would probably spend most of our time in our "proper" division -- since that, after all, would be the point of the separation. One danger of that would be that we juniors, the blind leading the blind, might spread misinformation. And we would have a hard time in some cases deciding the appropriate place for "intermediate" questions. I'm not at all sure where the line should be drawn between juniors and seniors. I do know that I'm a "junior." I know nothing whatsoever about programming (except for having read the first chapter in a book called -Teach Yourself C-, something I hope to get back to when I win Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes and can quit teaching English), I know nothing about VM systems except that my few times to have to use them (when traveling or when wandering into public parts of them offering telnet-accessible resources) have been my idea of hell, I haven't a clue about what is really happening in all those lines and satellites that spew data packets around the world. Yet I answer net questions almost every day, locally, nationally, and even internationally. (I enjoy telling the gurus in our Computing Center about my "international reputation" -- and asking them the answers to the questions I'm being asked if I don't know.) I'm able to act as "non-techy guru" because of surface-level knowledge I've picked up by hanging around lists with the techies. > It seems to me one list for all ListServ list owners should be able to > suffice -- especially if the service offered by the existing list is Yes. > Your LstOwn-L list coordinator, > John B Harlan And thank you, John, for this list. --Natalie ([log in to unmask])