Re: Accidental cross-posting

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Sat, 27 Nov 1999 18:15:37 -0600, phoenyx <quazar@dcnet2000.com>
wrote:

>I remember a time when the users of Apple II systems enjoyed
>sharing information. In fact it was part of what made using an
>Apple II so enjoyable.

I and many others still enjoy sharing information.  It is just that
this newsgroup is for sharing information about the Apple II, not some
other topic as there are more appropriate newsgroups for other topics.

Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not militant about wanting only Apple
II related posts here.  Off topic posts are bound to happen but that
is no reason why we should encourage off topic posts.  The best thing
to do is to point the poster to a more appropriate place or take some
other action to keep the thread from going on for too long or
wandering even farther afield.

>Then there is the group who feel every message here should
>be strictly Apple II related. True, this is an Apple2 news
>group, but it also affects those who would like to use the
>emulators of our great machine. For which virtually every
>platform around has in one form or another. A case in
>point: I was recently helping a NT user to set-up his system
>to run ApplePC. One of the readers of this group got so
>offended by this, he sent me several e-mails and even
>tried to turn my ISP against me. Had this person bothered
>to follow the thread he would have known this. In fact
>there were messages in the thread designed to remind
>other readers of this fact. If the thread offended him
>so much, it is quite easy to ignore it. If it had been this
>user who needed help, I would have done the same for
>him.

Well, had you been kind enough to the readers of this newsgroup, you
would have conducted the help either in a more appropriate newsgroup
(comp.emulators.apple2 comes immediately to mind) or in e-mail.  It
wouldn't have been an issue if you had done so.  :-)

If an emulator user has Apple II related questions they are more than
welcome to post them here but problems with installing and/or setting
up a program under Windows NT doesn't belong here.  It should be in a
Windows NT newsgroup or a newsgroup related to that program.  I know
myself and many others that read this newsgroup do not use Windows NT
so we gain nothing by reading that thread.

When it comes right down to it, would your first impulse be to come to
comp.sys.apple2 to ask a Windows related question?  Hopefully you
would answer no.  There is no reason why we should encourage others to
think of comp.sys.apple2 as the "jack of all newsgroups."  :-)

>I miss the days when Apple2 users were friendly and helpful.
>There has been so much bitterness in the wars in this news
>group, many have become defensive or abusive to all but a
>chosen few they deign to call friends.

Maybe I'm just skipping over the bad messages or something but I don't
see many nasty messages posted to the comp.sys.apple2.* newsgroups.
There are flare ups every so often by the same people who just don't
like each other but they don't happen often and it is really easy to
ignore them.  :-)

>One of the benefits of
>using newsgroups is the ability to meet new people, to make
>new friends.

I've never intentionally used newsgroups to meet new people or to make
friends.  I use them to get information and help and to give
information and help.  If I happen to strike up an online friendship
(which I can't really say I have) because of posts in a newsgroup, I
would just consider it a bonus.  :-)

>If we treat the newcomers with courtesy and
>whatever help we can, not only do we gain a friend, perhaps
>that person will hang around and see what makes Apple II
>users so great.

How are we not treating newcomers with courtesy?  Yes, we direct
people who have stumbled into the wrong newsgroups to the appropriate
newsgroups but what is wrong with that?  After all, a Mac user will
get much better help for their questions in a Mac newsgroup than they
will here.  Even though some of the readers here also have Macs (I
have one but know very little about it) there will be lots more Mac
users in the Mac newsgroups with a much wider range of experience and
expertise.  Not pointing them to the appropriate newsgroup would be
doing them a disservice, in my opinion.

By the way, if no one takes it upon themselves to teach "newbies"
about proper netiquette, how will they even know they are doing
something wrong or learn the right way to do things?

>And maybe we can convert another lost
>soul to our cause and increase the Apple2 user base in the
>process.

The chances of "converting" someone who stumbles in here by mistake
into an Apple II user I feel are slim to none, unfortunately.  I'd be
more that happy to find out I was wrong, though.  :-)

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| Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II University in A2Pro on Delphi     |
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