Re: two agendas of artificial intelligence

[justin@mailhost.ecn.uoknor.edu (Justin Thiesen)]

dastar@crl.com (Sam Ismail) writes:

>Justin Thiesen (justin@mailhost.ecn.uoknor.edu) wrote:

>: ><deletia completely unrelated to the apple 2>
>: >>
>: >>
>: ><Nathan Mates asking the poster to fix the bug that caused their news-
>: >reader to post to an unrelated group>

>: No, Nathan is not god, and I see these unrelated posts too, but on some

>You're right, he's not.  But why does he insist on acting liking it?

I haven't particularly noticed that he does.

I have noted a flamewar which continues on this group to no end, and
which often involves him, and I've often wished that the affected parties
would just take the matter to email, and I'm sure they have, but it seems
that as soon as one posts, all have to post, so as not to let public
abuse stand without reply.

For what it's worth, I could care less about most of what the flame
wars are about, and most of them seem to be motivated by personal dis-
like rather than actual apple2-related issues.  I wish they'd die down.

It's evident that Nathan Mates has invested a fair amount of time and
effort into the apple 2 communtiy, and because of that, I have a degree
of respect for him and his opinions with regard to the apple 2.
I freely admit that I'm responsible for effectively nothing with
regard to the apple //, that I've been content to be a user; I don't
see that as wrong, but don't necessarily expect others to have a lot
of regard for my opinions with respect to the machines and the software.

>: groups the unrelated posts have risen to a level which is drowning out
>: the on-topic community.  Maybe it won't erase the noise level, but 
>: efforts like his may help to keep it to a manageable level.  Ignoring

>So why doesn't he make these efforts via e-mail?  What possible advantage
>is there to making a public proclamation of the fact that a message
>is off-topic, other than to demonstrate his self-conceived notion of
>almightiness?  So what if the offender gets multiple e-mails telling
>him/her of the transgression?  All the better in preventing a similar
>mistake in the future.  At least it doesn't waste newsgroup bandwidth.
>Nathan is MORE guilty of generating off-topic messages because he
>propagates the off-topic message into a full-blown thread.

I suspect he does make these efforts via email, as well as posting.  I
suggest you ask him, before making these statements.

Given the current state of this group, I can understand that some of
the regulars might be in a state of relative short-temperedness
and act accordingly when spam/misposts show up.  If someone showed
up at a phyics club meeting that I went to, then spent 5 minutes
talking loudly about knitting, I'd be annoyed too.

By your own statements, then, I'm guilty of the same offense, because
I've propagated this thread.  But then so are you.  So If you have a
further problem, and you have it with me in particular, then I suggest
we take it to email.  (I'll not follow this up in the group unless
absolutely necessary)

I don't see that your viewpoint of guilt, relative or absolute, has much
value.  People have different ways of dealing with annoyances.  Some
are passive, such as ignoring them, some are active, as in seeking to
eliminate them.  You seem active, or at least your posting regarding
this matter is so, so I'd group you in with Mr. Mates, who is trying
to keep off-topic traffic down. If you truly just ignore annoyances,
then why don't you ignore Nathan Mates?  Why do his efforts, as an
involved member, to keep the newsgroup readable, annoy you more than
the incessant spamming and misposting?  This group isn't moderated,
and is the subject of interest for many people, and as each of us is his
own regulator, it is the duty of each of us to try and keep our own
environments in a shape in which we function.  The responses that
I've seen Mr. Mates make to misposts are relative mild compared to
some, and do the rest of us the favor of helping keep down the spam.
_I_ for one am happy that others care enough about the group to try
and keep it to some semblance of coherency.  What we have is order
by consensus; as there is often little consensus, there is often
little order.  If we could deal with the internal friction of the
group better, perhaps we could cut down on the noise level.

In any case, I still don't see anything wrong in Nathan's post.

justin thiessen
----------------
not speaking for OU or ECN

>-- 
>Sam
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
-- 
justin thiessen            | not speaking for OU or ECN 
justin@mailhost.ecn.ou.edu |