I'm still a newbie at Debian (I started when Woody was in Testing), and I owe a lot both to this list, and also to several of the OT activists, one of whom gave me invaluable help off-list when I first posted here. And I surely approve of folks taking an active part in arguing about matters controversial. Still, the continuing rant has become a plague. When I CTRL-d these threads, I wonder what I missed, and whether somebody lapsed and included genuine content. But when I read them, I am dismayed by the lack of depth and information, the blind ideology, and the adolescent self-assertion. I even wonder whether, as a political scientist (trained in political theory/political philsophy and international politics) retired from a good department at a respectable university, I may owe something back to this list. So here's my proposal: Will others join me in playing Simon Cowell in treating OT postings like auditions on American Idol? Specifically: cut the performance short at the _first_ error or stupidity or other flaw, and then make just one helpful comment on the merits that points the way to a better grasp of the topic, should anyone want that. Perhaps if enough of us did responded in this fashion -- perhaps we should mark our responses AIOT so that they would be easy to avoid -- perhaps one of two goods would result: Either folks would just quit it, or at least the quality of argument might improve? Realistically, this proposal of mine might just make things worse, so I am hereby consulting to see what others think of it. -- JohnRChamplin@columbus.rr.com ==================================================== GPG key 1024D/99421A63 2005-01-05 EE51 79E9 F244 D734 A012 1CEC 7813 9FE9 9942 1A63 gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 99421A63
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