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["Broadfoot, Kieran J" <Kieran.Broadfoot@xxxxxxx>]

Everyone,

Ive kept pretty quiet all weekend because it was nice t  revert t  lurker
mode t  watch how this weekends activities(!) turned out.  Maybe Mark can
answer my question... how many people actually left this group this
weekend?
Maybe it was on account of Phils and PaulGs somewhat obscure drunken
revelry, maybe it was another one of those annoying posts about projects.
Whatever it was I somehow doubt many people left.

I think I know why as well... this group isnt just about home automation,
its about community which is why most of us involved in systems
administration do what we do, i.e building communication channels.  We may
not always appreciate what people say and hell sometimes, just sometimes,
someone might say something you would spend a lifetime opposing but somehow
theres something that goes beyond all that. Its about community spirit. 
Who
else here feels they belong to a group of friends rather than a slew of
anonymous faces?

So yeah I am all getting a bit carried away but my point is that this group
works well and has some great people on it wh  sometimes talk rubbish..
lets
not lose that by splintering the group into irc chatrooms, usenet groups,
msn conferences etc.  If you splinter the group, people not on the
conferences wont feel a part of it and that i feel would be a real shame.

To prove my point heres a small snippet from an inspired post by a usenet
manager from stanford uni.  Ive got rid of most of the rant but he does
talk
about all the good things about what makes this type of forum kinda fun.

thanks
kieran

---8<---
From: Russ Allbery <rra@xxxxxxx>
Newsgroups: net.subculture.usenet
Subject: A Rant
Date: 31 Mar 1998 05:03:00 -0800

There are people here wh  understand how it felt t  be a teenaged kid wh
wandered into a newsgroup about comics because he collected comics at the
time and it was something interesting t  talk about.  Who had the
experience of walking into a culture and a community in the process, with
its own legends and history and elder figures and mythology, where the
Reverend Scowling Jim Cowling flaming Holbrook was a spectator sport,
where one heard stories of the legends like Chuq von Rospach and Jayembee
who had been posting there *just* before you got there but you weren't
quite there soon enough t  see them in all their glory, where no one
really took any of this all that seriously except for the friendships
formed in the process.  Who, a year or two later when he'd long since
given up comic collecting and lost interest in comics altogether found he
was still hanging out with the same people in the same places, because the
thing that Usenet did, the *important* thing that Usenet did that put
everything else t  shame, was that it provided a way for all of the cool
people in the world t  actually meet each other.

Sure, I've been involved in Usenet politics for years now, involved in
newsgroup creation, and I enjoy that sort of thing.  If I didn't, I
wouldn't be doing it.  But I've walked through the countryside of Maine in
the snow and seen branches bent t  the ground under the weight of it
because of Usenet, I've been in a room with fifty people screaming the
chorus of "March of Cambreadth" at a Heather Alexander concert in
Seattle
because of Usenet, I've written some of the best damn stuff I've ever
written in my life because of Usenet, I *started* writing because of
Usenet, I understand my life and my purpose and my center because of
Usenet, and you know 80% of what Usenet has given me has fuck all to do
with computers and everything to do with people.  Because none of that was
in a post.  I didn't read any of that in a newsgroup.  And yet it all came
out of posts, and the people behind them, and the interaction with them,
and the conversations that came later, and the plane trips across the
country to meet people I otherwise never would have known existed.

That's what this is all about.  That's why I do what I do.

People.

Do you know what it's like t  see something that you've put your heart and
soul into creating grow and flourish and *become* one of those
communities?  What it feels like t  give back to someone, someone just
discovering the Internet, those same feelings of wonder and awe and warmth
and community and friendship that you found?  T  receive, not the welcome
random bit of thanks here and there, but the far deeper and more wonderful
knowledge that you've built and maintained something that people are
*using* and using to do things and see things and think things that they
otherwise would never be able to do or would have no outlet for?

Do you know what it's like t  have a friend of yours randomly on a whim
decide something in a newsgroup you created is interesting and engaging
enough t  post t  Usenet for the first time?  And then t  experience the
horrible, sinking knowledge that with that post he's likely to get his
mailbox flooded with spam?  Or the raw fear that he'll then never post
again, scared away, when this place that has given you so much could give
that t  him as well, and that he could give the same t  other people?  And
that, damn it all, he's one of the cool people in this world, and you
don't know what these groups are all for, in the end, but if they're for
anything at all, they should be for people like him?
---8<---

---
Kieran J. Broadfoot
Equities Unix Administration.
Goldman Sachs, London.
Phone: 0207 774 5946
Dect: 0207 552 6003
Fax: 0207 774 0550



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