[Cumbria] comments

[Michael Saunders]

On Mon, 6 Jan 2003, David Latimer wrote:

> I have also been a Usenet group user for several years after being a CIX
> user before.  Some groups have been good but others are full of opinion
> and prejudice paraded as facts.  Is that familiar?

Yeah. Wherever there are humans, there'll be arguments. Which is a good
thing; those who follow one another like sheep, thinking and saying and
buying and reading and listening to the same things are genuinely scary
for society. Hurrah for debate!

> I didn't suggest that discussions about distros were not useful just
> that they be done using temperate language.

Yep, agreed, but although I've only been on this list a day I've skimmed
through the archives and can't see any bad language being used. People
were putting forward their points and listening to others -- there was no
"f*ck you, I'm right, you're wrong" invect or the like.

Similarly, calling us "anoraks" and claiming (puzzlingly) that debate
would lead to the collapse of Linux probably didn't help :)

> We had a number of people attend in the beginning who stopped attending.

If you were there in 2001, as I was, I know why a certain person stopped
attending but that's not to be discussed here :)

> These were all from the Barrow & Furness area. At least two told me that
> they found the Jamie & Chris activity at the meetings to be far from
> encouraging and sufficient deterrent to cease coming.

Heh, quit with the overly glib wording: they annoyed two people?

At least air what the problem is then -- you make it sound like they were
threatening people with knives. Long as I've known Chris (and briefly
Jamie) they were always willing to help newcomers, providing they showed
an interest in learning. Please do explain what the problem is!

> There is a lot more I could say but things would become more poisonous.

Nope, I don't think anything you could say would kill anybody... :)

> Dave M...please remove me from the mailing list and from any listings as
> a LUG member.

Oh well, even though I don't know you, it's sad to see someone go. But
explaining exactly what the problem is would help considerably!

Mike

-- 
Michael Saunders
www.aster.fsnet.co.uk