RFD: reorganization of the misc.education.home-school.* hier

Jayne Kulikauskas · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 93

REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
reorganization of the misc.education.home-school.* hierarchy

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the reorganization of a
Usenet hierarchy, as listed below:

NEWSGROUPS:

misc.education.home-school.resources blogs, websites, curricula, conferences, etc. (Moderated)
misc.education.home-school.christian remove, merge into m.e.h-s.misc

RATIONALE:

This proposal calls for the reorganization of the misc.education.home-school
sub-hierarchy by the addition of a moderated announcement group and the
consolidation of two under-utilized unmoderated groups into one. The
moderated group is envisioned as a place for descriptions, reviews and
links for homeschooling-related web sites, discussion fora and blogs. It
could also include information about other homeschooling resources, both
online and off, and homeschooling conferences. This would be a low
traffic moderated group that would not have discussions on it. It would
direct people interested in moderated discussion to the meh-sc.org web
forum or to misc.education.home-school.misc if they prefer something
unmoderated.

The group removal is in order to consolidate the very small amount of
home-schooling discussion taking place in two existing unmoderated
groups into one place. There are four main possibilities for dealing
with the existing groups: Retain the status quo. Remove both and
create an new unmoderated group. Remove misc.education.home-school.misc
and direct its traffic to misc.education.home-school. Remove
misc.education.home-school.christian and direct its traffic to
misc.education.home-school.misc. While all of these have disadvantages,
the last of the possibilities seems the best to the proponent.

The status quo is that there is no longer homeschooling discussion in
misc.education.home-school.misc. Requests for homeschooling information
are unanswered. The main non-spam content consists of periodic resource
posts by Steven Saus - links to educational sites that may be of interest
to homeschoolers. Meanwhile, misc.education.home-school.christian is
flooded by posts from a nym-shifting anti-homeschooler. The situation
became so untenable that the majority of regular posters migrated to a
web forum around a year ago. The few remaining regulars rarely discuss
homeschooling from a specifically Christian perspective. They are not
even all Christian homeschoolers. The group does not match its newsgroup
line description or its charter. Both groups are of very limited use to
people seeking home-schooling information or support.

Removing both of these and replacing them with a new group is impractical
due to propogation issues. Consolidating the groups under the
misc.education.home-school.christian name does not match the nature of the
current discussion. While the name misc.education.home-school.misc is a
better match, the remains of a community and the small amount of current
discussion exist on misc.education.home-school.christian. These people do
not like the idea of removing their group.

Whatever is decided about the disposition of the unmoderated groups, the
most important part of this proposal is the creation of the moderated
group. This creation would mean that once again Usenet would be relevant
to people seeking homeschooling information and support.

CHARTER:

misc.education.home-school.resources is a moderated group intended to
provide information about resources that will be helpful to
homeschoolers. Suitable topics include descriptions/reviews of
homeschoolers' blogs, homeschooling discussion fora and information
sites. It also welcomes information about homeschooling books and
curricula and announcements of upcoming conferences. It is not
intended for discussions.

MODERATION POLICY: misc.education.home-school.resources

misc.education.home-school.resources is expected to be a low traffic group
that can be easily hand moderated. Limited commercial advertising will
be allowed.

MODERATOR INFO: misc.education.home-school.resources

Moderator: Vic Kulikauskas
Advisory Moderator: Chris Barnes

More moderators are sought for the moderation panel.

Article Submissions: TBD
Administrative Contact: TBD

PROCEDURE:

For more information on the newsgroup creation process, please see:

http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:creation

Those who wish to influence the development of this RFD and its final
resolution should subscribe to news.groups.proposals and participate in the
relevant threads in that newsgroup. This is both a courtesy to groups in
which discussion of creating a new group is off-topic as well as the best
method of making sure that one's comments or criticisms are heard.

All discussion of active proposals should be posted to news.groups.proposals.
To this end, the 'Followup-To' header of this RFD has been set to this group.

If desired by the readership of closely affected groups, the discussion
may be crossposted to those groups, but care must be taken to ensure
that all discussion appears in news.groups.proposals as well.

We urge those who would like to read or post in the proposed newsgroup
to make a comment to that effect in this thread; we ask proponents to
keep a list of such positive posts with the relevant message ID
(e.g., Barney Fife, ).
Such lists of positive feedback for the proposal may constitute good
evidence that the group will be well-used if it is created.

DISTRIBUTION:

This document has been posted to the following newsgroups:

news.announce.newgroups (moderated)
news.groups.proposals (moderated)
misc.education.home-school.christian
misc.education.home-school.misc

The proponent will also post pointers to:

http://www.meh-sc.org/

PROPONENT:

Jayne Kulikauskas

CHANGE HISTORY:

2007-10-22 1st RFD

Archived from group: misc>education>home-school>christian

Scott Bryce · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 478

Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:

> The status quo is that there is no longer homeschooling discussion in
> misc.education.home-school.misc. Requests for homeschooling
> information are unanswered. The main non-spam content consists of
> periodic resource posts by Steven Saus - links to educational sites
> that may be of interest to homeschoolers. Meanwhile,
> misc.education.home-school.christian is flooded by posts from a
> nym-shifting anti-homeschooler. The situation became so untenable
> that the majority of regular posters migrated to a web forum around a
> year ago. The few remaining regulars rarely discuss homeschooling
> from a specifically Christian perspective. They are not even all
> Christian homeschoolers. The group does not match its newsgroup line
> description or its charter. Both groups are of very limited use to
> people seeking home-schooling information or support.

Consolidating the two groups will not solve the troll problem. The troll
is known to migrate to any group which shares a crosspost with MEH-SC.
If the groups are consolidated, the troll is likely to migrate to the
consolidated group. The result, if that happens, will be that the
consolidated group will be unusable.

The original charter for the two homeschooling groups states that two
separate groups were created to avoid tension between homeschoolers with
opposing world views. I feel that the division into two groups is still
appropriate, and that the reason for the current situation in MEH-SC is
that the distinction between the two groups has not been honored. Though
the troll claims to be a Christian, and claims some past involvement in
homeschooling, his posts are clearly hostile to both homeschooling and
the Judeo-Christian world view.

> These people do not like the idea of removing their group.

And feel that consolidating the two groups into MEH-SM would be a
defacto removal of MEH-SC, since MEH-SC will no longer exist.

> Whatever is decided about the disposition of the unmoderated groups,
> the most important part of this proposal is the creation of the
> moderated group. This creation would mean that once again Usenet
> would be relevant to people seeking homeschooling information and
> support.

It is my contention that the most important aspect of any on-line
homeschooling community is the friendly banter between homeschooling
parents. When MEH-SC was at its most active, the majority of the posts
were not informational, but were barely-topical or non-topical banter.
The social aspect of an on-line homeschooling community is more
important than the sharing of information. I have doubts about the
success of a homeschooling newsgroup where such off-topic banter is
intentionally excluded. If someone wants information about about a
particular homeschooling topic, they can turn to Google.

I don't see the newsgroup being useful for support when discussions are
not allowed according to the charter. Someone looking for support would
simply be pointed to some other on-line forum where such support would
be available.

In fact, the only real purpose I can see for the proposed MEH-SR is to
point people to the on-line forums at mehsc.org. Mehsc.org is mentioned
periodically on MEH-SC, so people looking for a troll-free on-line
homeschooling forum will already be able to find such a forum if they
lurk at MEH-SC for any length of time.

Scott Bryce · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 478

Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:

> The group removal is in order to consolidate the very small amount of
> home-schooling discussion taking place in two existing unmoderated
> groups into one place. There are four main possibilities for dealing
> with the existing groups: Retain the status quo. Remove both and
> create an new unmoderated group. Remove misc.education.home-school.misc
> and direct its traffic to misc.education.home-school. Remove
> misc.education.home-school.christian and direct its traffic to
> misc.education.home-school.misc. While all of these have disadvantages,
> the last of the possibilities seems the best to the proponent.

I have an additional thought.

You are proposing shutting down MEH-SC and moving that discussion to MEH-SM.

Some of the old regulars who have moved to mehsc.org still participate
or lurk in MEH-SC. If the troll can be dealt with in some other way,
there would be a handful of people who would return to MEH-SC.

On the other hand, there is only one person posting to MEH-SM, if you
don't count spam. You are proposing closing down the more active, or
potentially more active, group and moving the discussion to a group with
only one active poster.

If the troll migrates to MEH-SM, you will have accomplished nothing.

jayne.kulikauskas · Joined: 23 Oct 2007 Posts: 10

On Oct 22, 9:05 pm, Scott Bryce wrote:

[...]
> Consolidating the two groups will not solve the troll problem. The troll
> is known to migrate to any group which shares a crosspost with MEH-SC.
> If the groups are consolidated, the troll is likely to migrate to the
> consolidated group. The result, if that happens, will be that the
> consolidated group will be unusable.

I do not expect the consolidation to solve the troll problem and that
is not why I am suggesting it. A very small number of (non-spam, non-
troll) posts are being spread over two groups. By combining them, we
could come closer to the critical mass necessary for on-going
discussions.

> The original charter for the two homeschooling groups states that
two
> separate groups were created to avoid tension between homeschoolers with
> opposing world views. I feel that the division into two groups is still
> appropriate, and that the reason for the current situation in MEH-SC is
> that the distinction between the two groups has not been honored. Though
> the troll claims to be a Christian, and claims some past involvement in
> homeschooling, his posts are clearly hostile to both homeschooling and
> the Judeo-Christian world view.

In an ideal world where people respected newsgroup charters, I would
agree with you that both groups should be kept. However, enough
people ignore such things, that we can count on the distinction not
being honoured.

> And feel that consolidating the two groups into MEH-SM would be a
> defacto removal of MEH-SC, since MEH-SC will no longer exist.

The other way to consolidate the groups would be to remove .misc and
leave .christian. What do you think of this? My concern with this
solution is that the discussion that currently is happening is about
homeschooling in general rather than its Christian aspects.

[...]
> It is my contention that the most important aspect of any on-line
> homeschooling community is the friendly banter between homeschooling
> parents. When MEH-SC was at its most active, the majority of the posts
> were not informational, but were barely-topical or non-topical banter.
> The social aspect of an on-line homeschooling community is more
> important than the sharing of information. I have doubts about the
> success of a homeschooling newsgroup where such off-topic banter is
> intentionally excluded. If someone wants information about about a
> particular homeschooling topic, they can turn to Google.

As far as I can tell, homeschooling discussions on the web (not just
Usenet) have been fragmented such that there are many small fora that
lack a critical mass of posters. I would like to see a kind of post
on the proposed group of the form "This week on blog/forum X". Rather
than being a place for discussions, the proposed group would be a
place to keep track of the many scattered discussions all over the
web.

I think this could be successful. I plan to write some posts that
model this format and other appropriate messages and "seed" the group
with them. Then, I will invite people to write reviews/descriptions
of their sites to post on misc.education.home-school.resources. I
will also ask them to mention the newsgroup on their sites. It seems
likely that some people will do this since people tend to like
promoting their sites.

I think that a newsgroup of this sort will be good for homeschoolers
and also good for Usenet in that it will expose new people to Usenet.

> I don't see the newsgroup being useful for support when discussions are
> not allowed according to the charter. Someone looking for support would
> simply be pointed to some other on-line forum where such support would
> be available.

I'm thinking that anyone wishing to respond to the posts on .resources
would do so in .misc if they wanted an unmoderated forum or the meh-
sc.org web forum if they wanted a moderated discussion. So
the .resources group could facilitate discussion, even if it does not
take place on the group itself..

> In fact, the only real purpose I can see for the proposed MEH-SR is to
> point people to the on-line forums at mehsc.org. Mehsc.org is mentioned
> periodically on MEH-SC, so people looking for a troll-free on-line
> homeschooling forum will already be able to find such a forum if they
> lurk at MEH-SC for any length of time.

Every time mehsc.org is mentioned on .christian, Mark T replies with
many posts directing people to another site - one that mocks
homeschooling. There are many more mentions of the anti-homeschooling
site and these posts mimic the pointers to mehsc.org. If people read
enough posts they will figure it out eventually, but I don't expect
many to perservere to that point.

Jayne

Scott Bryce · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 478

jayne.kulikauskas@gmail.com wrote:

> I do not expect the consolidation to solve the troll problem and that
> is not why I am suggesting it. A very small number of (non-spam, non-
> troll) posts are being spread over two groups. By combining them, we
> could come closer to the critical mass necessary for on-going
> discussions.

By combining them, you are likely to lose the few people who still lurk
at MEH-SC.

> The other way to consolidate the groups would be to remove .misc and
> leave .christian. What do you think of this?

I don't like it.

> My concern with this
> solution is that the discussion that currently is happening is about
> homeschooling in general rather than its Christian aspects.

That problem is not caused by the existence of two newsgroups.

> I'm thinking that anyone wishing to respond to the posts on .resources
> would do so in .misc if they wanted an unmoderated forum or the meh-
> sc.org web forum if they wanted a moderated discussion. So
> the .resources group could facilitate discussion, even if it does not
> take place on the group itself..

So the paradigm is ask here, read your answer somewhere else?

> Every time mehsc.org is mentioned on .christian, Mark T replies with
> many posts directing people to another site - one that mocks
> homeschooling.

I don't think it takes long to figure out that Mr T is a troll.

Jim Riley · Joined: 23 Oct 2007 Posts: 5

[xpost added]

To anyone reading this in misc.education.home-school.christian

Please respond to this message if you are interested in having the
group continue.

Note that the Followup-To is set to news.groups.proposals a moderated
newsgroup that your ISP may not carry. If it does not, please set the
newsgroup to misc.education.home-school.christian and respond there.

Alternatively, you can use Google to access news.groups.proposals, or
you can use the news server:

news.killfile.org (no login required)

It would be helpful if you could give a little bit of information
about how you use the newsgroup, how long you have used it, etc.

I would suggest that if fewer than 10 people respond in a few weeks,
that it would be reasonable to remove the group and consolidate it
into misc.education.home-school.misc.
--
Jim Riley

jayne.kulikauskas · Joined: 23 Oct 2007 Posts: 10

On Oct 23, 2:17 am, Scott Bryce wrote:
> jayne.kulikaus...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I do not expect the consolidation to solve the troll problem and that
> > is not why I am suggesting it. A very small number of (non-spam, non-
> > troll) posts are being spread over two groups. By combining them, we
> > could come closer to the critical mass necessary for on-going
> > discussions.
>
> By combining them, you are likely to lose the few people who still lurk
> at MEH-SC.

I think that you are correct that this is likely if somehow .christian
were removed over their protests. If, however, these few people
became convinced that the consolidation were a good idea this
projected loss of posters would not be an issue. It is not a problem
inherent in the consolidation per se, but only in enacting the
consolidation without support.

I have no intention of consolidating the groups without the support
of the homeschoolers still posting there (even in the unlikely event
of the Board agreeing to it under those circumstances). I included
the consolidation in the proposal so that I could present the
arguments in favour of it and try to persuade people of the value of
this idea. If I can not persuade people, then that part of the
proposal will be withrawn from the next iteration of the RFD.

> > The other way to consolidate the groups would be to remove .misc and
> > leave .christian. What do you think of this?
>
> I don't like it.
>
> > My concern with this
> > solution is that the discussion that currently is happening is about
> > homeschooling in general rather than its Christian aspects.
>
> That problem is not caused by the existence of two newsgroups.

What do you think causes that problem? I think it is caused by a
shift in the general attitude on Usenet. A significant proportion of
people apparently feel that lack of moderation means that it is okay
for people to post whatever they want on a group. Because charters
cannot be enforced; they are irrelevant. There have always been some
people who thought this, but it was mitigated to some extent by social
pressure. It now appears to be the dominant view.

The original splitting of homeschooling discussion into the .chistian
and .misc groups was a good idea. It worked for many years. But
Usenet is different now. In the current climate it is not possible to
maintain the distinction between these groups without using
moderation. We now have, in effect, two general homeschooling
discussion groups, neither of which has very much traffic.

> > I'm thinking that anyone wishing to respond to the posts on .resources
> > would do so in .misc if they wanted an unmoderated forum or the meh-
> > sc.org web forum if they wanted a moderated discussion. So
> > the .resources group could facilitate discussion, even if it does not
> > take place on the group itself..
>
> So the paradigm is ask here, read your answer somewhere else?

I am not envisioning .resources as a group in which people would ask
questions. Instead there would be period postings directing people
with questions about homeschooling to groups where they can ask
questions and be answered. I consider this a significant improvement
over the current situation in which people asking homeschooling
questions on .misc are ignored and on .christian are abused.

> > Every time mehsc.org is mentioned on .christian, Mark T replies with
> > many posts directing people to another site - one that mocks
> > homeschooling.
>
> I don't think it takes long to figure out that Mr T is a troll.

Yes, that is relatively easy. Figuring out that there are a few posts
by others buried among all his and that they might be worth reading,
is much more difficult.

Jayne

jayne.kulikauskas · Joined: 23 Oct 2007 Posts: 10

On Oct 23, 10:34 am, Jim Riley wrote:
[cross-post added]
> I would suggest that if fewer than 10 people respond in a few weeks,
> that it would be reasonable to remove the group and consolidate it
> into misc.education.home-school.misc.

My personal threshhold for modifying my proposal is lower than that,
depending on who the people responding are. Some opinions carry more
weight with me than others. Scott Bryce, for example, is a Christian
homeschooler with a long, appropriate posting history on .christian.
His thoughts have far more influence on me than those of people who
have shown themselves hostile to Christianity or to homeschooling.

Jayne

Martin X. Moleski, SJ · Joined: 23 Oct 2007 Posts: 4

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:44:40 CST, "jayne.kulikauskas@gmail.com" wrote in
:

> ... I am not envisioning .resources as a group in which people would ask
>questions.

I think that may be a mistake.

People tend to ask questions when they find a newsgroup.

Other people tend to answer from different points of view,
which sparks a desire to discuss the issues raised.

I think you should frame the charter in such a way that
discussion of resources as well as announcements about
them are allowed.

Or call the group *.announce instead. I think there
is precedent for that kind of group. That name might
help to make it clearer that only announcements will
be posted in the group.

Marty
--
Member of the Big-8 Management Board (B8MB) -- http://www.big-8.org
Unless otherwise indicated, I speak for myself, not for the Board.

Scott Bryce · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 478

jayne.kulikauskas@gmail.com wrote:
> What do you think causes that problem?

We both know. Mark Tindall. And to some extent, TJ.

> I think it is caused by a
> shift in the general attitude on Usenet. A significant proportion of
> people apparently feel that lack of moderation means that it is okay
> for people to post whatever they want on a group.

A significant portion of the group has reported Mark Tindall for abuse.
His ISP has not done anything to stop him.

> Because charters
> cannot be enforced; they are irrelevant.

Not if people behave themselves.

> The original splitting of homeschooling discussion into the .chistian
> and .misc groups was a good idea.

I think t still is. My gut feeling now is that the MEH-SC crowd won't
return to usenet if there is no MEH-SC to return to.

People left MEH-SC because of hostility to the way that Christians
approach homeschooling. Consolidating the groups won't solve that problem.

> I am not envisioning .resources as a group in which people would ask
> questions. Instead there would be period postings directing people
> with questions about homeschooling to groups where they can ask
> questions and be answered. I consider this a significant improvement
> over the current situation in which people asking homeschooling
> questions on .misc are ignored and on .christian are abused.

A homeschooling forum in which discussions aren't allowed is DOA.

Michael S. Morris · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 780

Tuesday, the 23rd of October, 2007

Jim Riley wrote:

[xpost added]

To anyone reading this in misc.education.home-school.christian

Please respond to this message if you are interested in having the
group continue.

OK. I am interested in having the group continue.

Jim Riley says:

It would be helpful if you could give a little bit of information
about how you use the newsgroup, how long you have used it, etc.

I subscribe to three newsgroups: rec.arts.books,
misc.education.home-school.misc, and
misc.education.home-school.christian. I regularly post
to one only of these groups, m.e.h-s.c. I am not
Christian myself, in fact I am approximately atheist.
But, I am certainly not hostile to Christians.
And I am a homeschooling father of three children
and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics with a strong
interest in the advanced academics (far beyond what is
possible in the public schools) that homeschooling
offers my children.

m.e.h-s.m has been pretty dead for discussion for a
long time, and m.e.h-s.c has been assaulted by a
particularly virulent nuisance troll, name of Mark Tindall,
who posts from Australia. He tends to post stuff that
is copy-and-pasted from other people's websites
(Often without proper attribution), and he avoids discussion of
anything he posts, and has taken a shine to insulting
Christians, homeschoolers, regulars on the group,
and Americans. The insults we could live with, but
Mark also keeps repeat-posting exactly the same stuff,
only varying the sender name in lots of different
forms---meaning that simple
killfiling doesn't work for people who don't want to
engage him or see him. As a consequence, many group
regulars have left this forum for a moderated website,
meh-sc.org.

I have stayed, because I think that Tindall is
easy enough to ignore, or use as a response/platform
for writing things I want to write about. And, I
am pretty rabidly pro free speech, so that I see
approximately no reason or incentive to read or to
write to moderated forum (howsomever liberally moderated
it may be).

Mike Morris
(msmorris@netdirect.net)

Practically, I think that deleting m.e.h-s.c would
have the effect of shuffling the remaining regulars
over to m.e.h-s.m, which, in itself, wouldn't be so
bad a thing, except that it almost certainly would
induce the troll to move there with us.

jayne.kulikauskas · Joined: 23 Oct 2007 Posts: 10

On Oct 23, 1:18 pm, Scott Bryce wrote:
> jayne.kulikaus...@gmail.com wrote:
> > What do you think causes that problem?
>
> We both know. Mark Tindall. And to some extent, TJ.

For the record, I consider trolling in general and Mark Tindall in
particular to be only a minor problem for the .christian group. I
think that the most serious problem is attrition. In the last 10
years, interest in and participation in homeschooling has dramatically
increased in the real world. On Usenet it has been steadily
decreasing. This trend was observable before Mark T. turned up, so it
can't be blamed on him. Most Usenet groups in my experience are
gradually losing members and not replacing them, so I don't think it
is caused by anything especially wrong with the homeschooling groups.

> > I think it is caused by a
> > shift in the general attitude on Usenet. A significant proportion of
> > people apparently feel that lack of moderation means that it is okay
> > for people to post whatever they want on a group.
>
> A significant portion of the group has reported Mark Tindall for abuse.
> His ISP has not done anything to stop him.

With no negative consequences for the ISP.

> > Because charters
> > cannot be enforced; they are irrelevant.
>
> Not if people behave themselves.

And how likely is it that *all* posters will "behave themselves". It
takes very few people to seriously disrupt a newsgroup. I think, in
this case, it is better to plan our actions based on what people are
likely to do, rather than on what people ought to do.

> > The original splitting of homeschooling discussion into the .chistian
> > and .misc groups was a good idea.
>
> I think t still is. My gut feeling now is that the MEH-SC crowd won't
> return to usenet if there is no MEH-SC to return to.

I would think it unfair to those who worked to establish the web forum
if the former .christian posters left it to return to Usenet. I do
not consider this a desirable outcome.

> People left MEH-SC because of hostility to the way that Christians
> approach homeschooling. Consolidating the groups won't solve that problem.

Personally, I have no objection to hostility. I object to the nym-
shifting and flooding. One anti-homeschooling individual "shouts
down" all positions contrary to his own. If he merely expressed
opinions hostile to Christian homeschooling, that would have the
potential to be thought-provoking and promote discussion. You
mentioned TJ earlier. I have no problem with him posting
on .christian even though I disagree with almost everything he writes.

> > I am not envisioning .resources as a group in which people would ask
> > questions. Instead there would be period postings directing people
> > with questions about homeschooling to groups where they can ask
> > questions and be answered. I consider this a significant improvement
> > over the current situation in which people asking homeschooling
> > questions on .misc are ignored and on .christian are abused.
>
> A homeschooling forum in which discussions aren't allowed is DOA.

I am not so sure about this. I mentioned the Blogger Awards site
elsewhere as an example of a meta-level site. As I recall it does not
have discussions and is very successful.

Jayne

jayne.kulikauskas · Joined: 23 Oct 2007 Posts: 10

On Oct 23, 1:16 pm, "Martin X. Moleski, SJ"
wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:44:40 CST, "jayne.kulikaus...@gmail.com" wrote in
> :
>
> > ... I am not envisioning .resources as a group in which people would ask
> >questions.
>
> I think that may be a mistake.
>
> People tend to ask questions when they find a newsgroup.
>
> Other people tend to answer from different points of view,
> which sparks a desire to discuss the issues raised.

The intention is to direct questions and their ensuing discussion
elsewhere. Some of it may end up on .misc which would benefit that
group.

> I think you should frame the charter in such a way that
> discussion of resources as well as announcements about
> them are allowed.
>
> Or call the group *.announce instead. I think there
> is precedent for that kind of group. That name might
> help to make it clearer that only announcements will
> be posted in the group.

That was my original choice of name because that is the Usenet
precedent most similar to what I am proposing. However, as I
understand it, my proposal is different enough from a
classic .announce group that this could cause confusion. Since I am
intending a new format, I lean towards a new name. I am not strongly
attached to the name .resources and am open to other suggestions.

Jayne

Aratzio · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 2

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:46:54 CST, in news.groups.proposals,
"jayne.kulikauskas@gmail.com" bloviated:

>On Oct 23, 10:34 am, Jim Riley wrote:
>[cross-post added]
>> I would suggest that if fewer than 10 people respond in a few weeks,
>> that it would be reasonable to remove the group and consolidate it
>> into misc.education.home-school.misc.
>
>My personal threshhold for modifying my proposal is lower than that,
>depending on who the people responding are. Some opinions carry more
>weight with me than others. Scott Bryce, for example, is a Christian
>homeschooler with a long, appropriate posting history on .christian.
>His thoughts have far more influence on me than those of people who
>have shown themselves hostile to Christianity or to homeschooling.
>
>Jayne

As usual Jayne's thinking only allows for those who agree with her.
Contrary opinion is of course *inappropriate* for her myopic world
view. Therefore moderation by the *appropriate* people is the only
solution. That way there is no need for such messy things as
disagreement or argument. She will have a pleasant place for her
friends to post.

Now where have we heard all that before?

Scott Bryce · Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 478

jayne.kulikauskas@gmail.com wrote:
> For the record, I consider trolling in general and Mark Tindall in
> particular to be only a minor problem for the .christian group. I
> think that the most serious problem is attrition.

Attrition is certainly a problem, but we both know that the migration of
most of the MEH-SC regulars to mehsc.org was specifically to move the
discussion to a place where Mark Tindall could not disrupt the discussion.

> I would think it unfair to those who worked to establish the web forum
> if the former .christian posters left it to return to Usenet. I do
> not consider this a desirable outcome.

The irony is that the person who set up the forum was the most vocal in
his opposition to there being a web-based forum. He prefers to use a
newsreader for discussions.

He set up mehsc.org as a favor for those who wanted an alternative to a
newsgroup dominated by Mark T.

> Personally, I have no objection to hostility. I object to the nym-
> shifting and flooding. One anti-homeschooling individual "shouts
> down" all positions contrary to his own. If he merely expressed
> opinions hostile to Christian homeschooling, that would have the
> potential to be thought-provoking and promote discussion.

There is nothing thought provoking about hostility.