administrivia (was Re: Visiting Toronto)

[Derrick J Brashear]

On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, Fred W. Schneider III wrote:

> I would have to think so, Don.  Therefore perhaps we should accept ourselves as a group of friends or acquaintances who have first of all an interest in southwestern Pennsylvania and second an overall interest in electric railways.  Using that concept, we could really post anything to the site that we think might interest most of us, and the disinterested can
> delete it.  We wouldn't need content police.  Those who are not interested can used the delete key.  Perhaps the really point we need is correct subject lines so we know what to delete without reading...

Well, the problem with that is, as you see, people never change the
subject as the topic changes. This particular message, for instance, has
little to do with Toronto. 

> However ... AND THIS IS FOR D#1 ... I would particularly like to see an address file developed for people who have an abiding interest in traction outside the United States, Canada, and Mexico.  I average one trip a year to Europe (this year it has been two aggregating 33 days). I would truly like a place to go to comment on and receive the comments of others on
> tramway museums in Russia, new developments in Melbourne, the new European light railways (I can think of several Karlsruhe extensions, one in Saarbrucken, two new French cities, one expanded French system, one expanded English system, and two all new British properties, all in the last twelve months).   While I read Modern Tramways (or whatever it is we call it
> this year), it would be nice to have a  group of friends around the world where I can go to ask for a list of the most artistic photo locations in Berlin, or for answers to technical questions on the new 15,000 volt AC / 750 volt DC cars running in Karlsruhe and Saarbrucken, or for comments about day tickets in Manchester, England, or perhaps for the name of
> whoever might be able to give an official behind the scenes tour on the Isle of Man, or how to get the most interesting riding in one eight hour day on the London Underground.  I can think of a group of people who we might like to solicit:  Jack May, Phil Craig, Russ Jackson, Fred Schneider, Harold Geissenheimer, Mike Taplin, John Bromley, Bill Vigrass ... I'm
> sure there are a lot more.
> 
> Now is this going to get shot off the flag pole?

Not by me, the effort needed to create a list and an archive on my part is
probably less than what it would take someone to join egroups and do it. I
don't care; If there's demand I'll do it. My personal take is this:

I have a personal belief in "a place for everything, and everything in its
place". I use this as my guiding philosophy. I am not, however, personally
offended by off-topic wanderings. My primary interest in trying to retain
focus is that since this is "theoretically" a technical rather than a
social list, an overwhelming amount of traffic outside the true focus of
the list will turn off people who actually have stuff to contribute that's
on-topic and they'll give up and leave. If I'm wrong, then I don't care,
and I'll just shut up (and I have no problem with that). If I'm right,
perhaps it makes more sense to have a "social" list and a "technical"
list. But Don's point about the etb news and chat lists stands.

Now that I was far too wordy, why don't I just say the whole point is to
piss off as few people as possible, and preferably nobody. "I" am not the
list, "we" are the list, so I'm not going to shove anything down anyone's
throat.

Likewise, someone commented a few weeks ago about my "ISP". To some extent
I am my own ISP. At the moment the list is hosted on a machine in my
employer's machine room. Being a university, they're pretty lax in terms
of what goes on on their network. That I'm employed by the organization
which maintains the central computing infrastructure helps, because it
means if something unfavorable is happening administratively I can
literally walk down the hall and *scream* at someone (my boss and his boss
are flexible enough that I have no problem doing that; 3 levels above me
is more political than technical, and I stay out of it for the most part).

If they get a bug up their a** I'll either move the machine off campus, or
just change jobs; At this point if I were to change jobs hosting the
machine this list is on, or better yet providing me with a business grade
data connection at home, would be a term of my accepting their offer.

So you can assume that my ISP isn't going to muzzle you either. 

If you have comments on this, please, by all means, feel free to drop them
directly to shadow at dementia.org

-D