Subject:
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do we need an "on-topic.debate"? (was Re: The problem I have with upcoming product hoaxes
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Followup-To:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Fri, 16 Jun 2000 14:40:08 GMT
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Viewed:
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963 times
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In lugnet.general, Frank Filz writes:
> Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> I agree. I'm not sure what my own feelings are, but I'll be interested
> in seeing what comes out of a serious discussion (assuming there are
> folks interested in this discussion).
>
> The thought of discussion on this point did raise an idea of mine, what
> about a newsgroup, lugnet.debate, for this type of discussion. I don't
> think it really belongs in general (because I suspect the average Lugnet
> user doesn't care about the discussion - though many might be interested
> in a summary or conclusions of the discussion). On the other hand, it
> doesn't really belong in lugnet.off-topic.debate because it clearly is
> directly related to our hobby and the purpose of Lugnet. Other past
> debates which I would see as being appropriate for this area:
>
> - the discussion on "leaking" information
> - the debate on the Georgia outlet store calling folks
>
> I'm sure there are more.
I think your idea has merit and is worthy of discussion. However, these debates
can veer off-topic quickly (the blue hopper debate, IMHO, quickly degenerated
into an anti-American/anti-wealth diatribe.) Would that mean that you'd have to
move them? There has been some debate around the practice of moving threads,
and a thread move is usually messy because not everyone moves at the same time
if there are multiple branches going.
To emphasize the need to stay on topic, I would name the group with deliberate
redundancy. Instead of lugnet.debate I would call it lugnet.lego.debate or
lugnet.on-topic.debate (the last is the one I like best)
Todd might well argue that "on-topic", strictly speaking, from a logical or
semantic viewpoint, isn't needed in the name. But I'd use the redundancy
deliberately. It's a principle of system design that you should introduce
redundancy when it makes sense to do so and when doing so reduces the
likelyhood of a "single point of failure" failure being catastrophic to system
operation.
In the large, though, are these debates frequent enough that a new group is
merited? Do we want to in general encourage debates? Does creating a group do
that, or provide a channel for them that shields other groups from the
divisiveness that debates sometimes engender? I don't know the answer to these
questions.
++Lar
FUT admin.general
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: The problem I have with upcoming product hoaxes
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| (...) I definitely got a laugh out of it, not as much of a laugh as set 666 though. (...) I agree. I'm not sure what my own feelings are, but I'll be interested in seeing what comes out of a serious discussion (assuming there are folks interested in (...) (24 years ago, 16-Jun-00, to lugnet.general)
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