What's up with this group lately?

"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com wrote:

There must have been dozens of messages I never even glanced at...

Exactly.

no telling what I missed. Restoration of the Third Reich? Pol Pot's preferred
sexual positions? Who knows?

LOL!

--
Peter

Kevin Clarke wrote in
nk.net:

Actually right now would be perfect as well. Unfortunately my instructor
just took a part 135 job in Ct so I am currently not in a committed
relationship! :^ ) I've got 2.2 of actual. I think it is fun. A little
vertigo the first time I punched a hole in a cloud. But I got used to
it. The training really matters. Scan scan scan.

Get yourself another instructor pronto!

And yes, the training - and the currency - are really important. The scan
needs to be second nature otherwise you can find yourself in trouble at just
the wrong times - getting up or getting down. If you haven't flown
instruments in a few months, you can lose that second nature for a few
minutes - perhaps long enough to get yourself into trouble...

Blanche wrote in news:1163521432.182812
@irys.nyx.net:

I've noticed an increase in spam email, too. An order of magnitude!
Altho I've got 2 or 3 spam filters on my email (depending on the
address) that send the spam to /dev/null, I always check the count,
just out of curiousity. "debora????" has been incredibly prolific
trying to push scam stocks the past week or so.

Monday morning I had over 150 spam email (fortunately, sent to /dev/null)
Even then, 3-5 still got thru 3 layers of filters!


Find yourself an ISP with BoxTrapper.

Sorry, I didn't mean to single you out

Somehow, I doubt that. Next time, take yourself as an example. You
started that thread and numerous other that degenerated in the same
way.

LOL. Coming from you, that's pretty funny. We're all still waiting
for the day when you start a thread here that has ANYTHING to do with
"piloting". Just one lousy story about a beautiful flight, or one
short tale of a great $100 hamburger would be nice.

As others have stated, these threads stray from their original topics
only when you (and a select few others) post your vitriolic, off-topic
comments. Response then leads to counter-response, and soon we're
talking about nuking the Middle East, gay marriage, or President Bush.

It's disgusting, and it's not what this group is supposed to be about.
I feel bad that I'm guilty of following you down this primrose path.

Tell you what: I'll buy you beer at OSH if you can start just ten (10)
threads about your piloting experiences -- and only about piloting --
between now and OSH '07, without straying into politics.

That's just one *real* post every 3 weeks, or so.

Deal?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

It's like the dog barking at the mirror, who just doesn't get that the fear
and aggression he's seeing is just himself.

Well put.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Thomas Borchert" wrote in message
...
Peter,

A lack of a response in this group does not always indicate an acceptance
of a presented view.

Sure. But IMHO there are some views that should elicit a responce from a
majority of the group here in order to save its civility.

It _is_ damn hard to respond, when you stopped reading the whole thread, a
while back.
--
Jim in NC

"Gary Drescher" wrote

But when a bona fide member of the group advocates exterminating Muslims and
threatens to lynch them, it is unconscionable for people participating in that
conversation to let the remarks pass.

One more time, and understand this, you can't respond when you stopped reading
the thread.
--
Jim in NC

"Gary Drescher" wrote

More than anything else in this conversation, Grumman's remarks (and the
various reactions and non-reactions to them) reveal the true nature of this
country's cultural divide.

Once again, you can not respond if you are not reading the thread. Besides, one
person's radical views are not a sign of a whole people's views. If that were
the case, we would all in perpetually place the Germans on a bad list, right?
--
Jim in NC

Judah wrote:
Is it just me, or is there a full moon out or something?!?!

I have an observation based on another newsgroup. Around 8 years ago,
I was idly thinking about going skydiving, and followed the group
rec.skydiving for a while. I recall there was the standard baseline
amount of arguments and such that you get on any Usenet newsgroup, but
mostly it was people talking about the jumps they'd been on, discussing
the gear, techniques, places to jump, etc. Life happened and I didn't
end up jumping at that time.

Fast forward to about two years ago. I get interested again and go back
to rec.skydiving to check it out. Just looking at the recent and new
articles, the group seemed to consist of three or four people flaming
each other. I dug into the archives at Google a little and found that
most of the discussion was now taking place in the forums on a Web site.
I checked out that site and ended up becoming a fairly active member of
the forums. I don't like the interface of most web-based forums - the
first requrirement for designing one seems to be to throw away everything
learned from 20+ years of Usenet on how to have an online group
discussion - but in this case, I wanted the content enough to put up
with the interface.

Like most Web sites with forums, there are several topical forums - one
for general discussions (like r.a.piloting), several for specific
subtopics (like r.a.ifr or r.a.homebuilt), even some in languages other
than English. There are also two forums for "off topic" discussion.
One is for general chat, and the other is for debate on topics that are
often controversial - religion, politics, guns, etc. The (volunteer)
moderators on the site are not bashful about moving a post, thread, or
part of a thread from one forum to another if the content changes
drastically, so the forums stay pretty much on topic.

The forum software displays the grand total number of posts on the main
page of the forums. This January it hit two million posts. I was bored
(winter weather, so no jumping) and decided to do a little analysis of
the post counts, thread length, etc in the various forums, and I found
something very interesting: About two-thirds of the posts on the site
were in the "general chat" and "controversial issues" forums. In other
words, around 66% of the discussion on the site had _little or nothing_
to do with jumping. My first thought was "I wonder why the guy that runs
this site puts up with this... two-thirds of the posts aren't even on
topic!" But then I realized - if you _don't_ have those forums for "off
topic" posts, people _will_ make them anyway in the forums that _are_
available. I think this is what you are seeing in r.a.piloting right now.

Usenet sort of has a mechanism for this. The talk.* groups are designed
for the kinds of debates that go around and around quite heatedly, like
religion, politics, guns, etc. People could post messages there if they
wanted, but since those groups tend to attract vocal supporters on all
sides of a question, it's not a good place to post if you want lots of
people to agree with you. What I think happens is that posters in a
newsgroup like r.a.piloting see that other posters mostly share their
views on the main topic (aviation) and then assume that other posters
will also mostly share their views on other topics, including
controversial ones. So they include "off topic" comments in their posts
with the expectation that many other posters will agree with them.
Sometimes these comments arise out of discussions about flying - in most
countries, if you fly, you have to interact with the government at some
level, which easily leads to comments about government, politics, etc.
Other such comments come out of left field somewhere. No matter where
they come from, the result is the same - the original poster gets
surprised when the other posters turn out to have the same wide range of
opinions that people in general have.

Understand that I am not singling out any one poster or group of posters
here. I think that assuming that those who share your views on one
topic will also share your views on other topics is a "human nature"
thing that everybody does to some degree. I'm not sure if this is
something you will ever be able to fix in software. I am specifically
_not_ suggesting moderation of all of the rec.aviation.* groups, nor am
I suggesting that the discussion on the rec.aviation.* groups be moved
to Web site forums instead. Putting things like "OT" or "POL" in the
subject line works for a little while but then gradually becomes
ineffective. One informal metric that I use here is that when a thread
has more than about 30 posts, it's probably past the end of its useful
life, but I have seen much shorter "useless" threads and much longer
"useful" ones.

Or, if all of the above is too deep, just take it as part of the natural
ebb and flow of the newsgroups. Or even simpler: This too shall pass.

Matt Roberds

The (volunteer) moderators on the site are

Bingo. A (well) moderated group will not have an off-topic posting
problem because those off topic posts will be moved or labeled, and the
subject lines are likely to remain useful. The off topic discussion can
continue but the whole thing is far more organized. Absent moderation,
individual posters have to do it themselves. Cats are easier to herd.

But if we want it, we can be more proactive with subject lines and
prepends. We'll accomplish the same result, and do it on Usenet,
without resorting to another group.

What I think happens is that posters in a
newsgroup like r.a.piloting see that other posters mostly share their
views on the main topic (aviation) and then assume that other posters
will also mostly share their views on other topics, including
controversial ones.

I think there's also the fact that the OT topics that come up here have
profoundly affected aviation, and are thus of special interest to
pilots. Also, as we get to know each other, we are interested in each
other's views on things. Personally, I am not at all surprised that
other people don't agree with me. After all, I =am= the most
enlightened one. g,d

I'm not sure if this is
something you will ever be able to fix in software.

No. Just wetware.

Putting things like "OT" or "POL" in the
subject line works for a little while but then gradually becomes
ineffective.

I think we just forget. We can all be more aggressive in changing
subject lines. How does this affect (or break) threading?

Jose
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where
it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.