New Newsgroup?

Point taken. From my own early experience, I found this group before buying a mill, and decided not to post here because of the noise level. Yahoo groups have not worked for me for some time (somebody added me to a particiular group and that was it), so I couldn't get to the mill-drill forum, and finally posted here as a "last resort". The merrits of the group were soon obvious, but I wonder how many others are scared off.

One option might be to charter a rec.crafts.metalworking.soapbox or something like that, and gently encourage the truly OT stuff to go there???

Now, about the Supreme Court... ;)

Bill

Now I know why there are so many OTs. People see the "rec" in rec.crafts.metalworking and think this is the recreational sub-group for metalworking. ;-)

Nick

Religious war #3

--Learn how to write a kill file and all your troubles will go away..

Not really. Kill files don't make judgements.

Bill

Works for me, try this:

There's some OT crap but it's confined to one sub-forum. And yes, it's moderated. Whack-O politics not allowed, only metalworking.

Jim

Practically anyone can initiate the creation of a new newsgroup. Depending upon the chosen hierarchy (comp., rec., alt., and so on), the likelihood of the new group actually being implemented may be slim or it may be a slam-dunk.

A good place to start would be at

Don Stauffer wrote in news:MCpDf.326$ snipped-for-privacy@news.uswest.net:

Nah....relatively easy, get a decent news reader, and set some filters. If you filter cliff and gunner, you will only see about 40-50 mostly on- topic posts a day.

What... you only come over here to take a crap?

Hey, gunner sets the tone. I just conform.

Jim

Thanks for the link.

Stephen R.

Jim, most people grow out of _that_ defense when they're still in grade school.

I agree, between the off topic posts and spam the noise level is too high at RCM. Especially when we have these lamers posting Armed Citizen stories, or questions on how to pattern a shotgun. Like just because they shoot guns we're supposed to be impressed.

go to the practicalmachinst group, it's moderated, and I learn much more stuff there.

Oddly, there's a gunsmithing sub-group there, and it would have been an entirely appropriate discussion for there. I really didn't think it that odd for rcm to talk about patterning a shotgun. Some of the knowledgeable regulars gave very good advice, and I thought it was a welcome respite from the business as usual.

But anyway, that group really is great, partly because it *is* moderated.

Jim

Is there such a thing as an a priori kill file? One that will guess what off-topic discussions will come up? I could write a kill file to kill anything with OT in it, but not all OT discussions have OT in subject line.

There's this thing, Tony, called a "subject:" line. It tells people (nominally) what the thread is about. If you're not interested in gunsmithing, skip the ones with the word "gun" in them. Just an idea.

Heck I thought you would have been overjoyed, you've been declared the mayor of rcm....

Jim

Well, they're additive. So you could kill any post that has two or more commas in the Newsgroups: line (takes out posts crossposted to 3 or more groups), any post with OT: in the subject line, any post from particular individuals, and so on. Keep adding until you get the desired signal:noise ratio. Will you miss some signal? Sure. Usenet is huge, you're missing signal all the time. But pick what and who you don't want to read, and programatically ignore them, and _your_ Usenet improves.

Gunner,

I didn't mention you directly but since you opted to jump in ...

Life Member NRA here, NYS Lifetime Hunting License, hunted in AK & Canada, USN Silver E Rifle & Pistol,even went to Knob Creek 3x, (one time slept in the back seat of a minivan at the Shoneys cause all the motels were booked). So if I want guntalk i'll check out the many gunboards or rec.guns

And patterning a shotgun thread has as much metal working content as a discussion about using aluminum foil to heat heat leftovers.

If the shoe fits........