🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <blhc86$lgl$1@blackout.DMS.cwru.edu> you wrote:

: Meanwhile, back in reality, the Cleveland Freenet was costing a large
: pile of money to continue to run with only a fraction of the users it
: once had, largely due to it not having a snazzy graphical interface,
: in my humble opinion.  It was great in it's time, but let's keep some
: perspective.

        Well, I disagree about cause and effect here.

        Freenet was a fairly orderly *community* system until it was
opened up for outside telnet access, sometime around 1992-ish.  Before then,
it was dialup-only, (216) 368-8888, a Cleveland-local call.  Thereafter,
the alt.flame and alt.tasteless mentality of raw USENET invaded many of the
popular hangouts.  Not that cwru.general didn't always have its own
flamewars.  But when immigrants trashed the Literary Sig by posting porn
and let's-see-how-far-we-can-go stuff, and CWRU did not support the sysops
in their efforts to get the posters bounced for not following the SIG
rules, it was clear that the system was doomed.  And it was never about
"freedom of expression".  People could create SIGs where they could do
whatever they wanted.  It's just that certain people wanted to do everything
everywhere, all the time.  You like flames?  Fine, create the Flame SIG
and go flame there...and keep it there.  You think the Literary SIG is
too genteel?  Fine, create a SIG for what you like to read, and talk about
it there.  Just respect the borders of the SIGs.  *THAT* was what CWRU
admins refused to do:  to acknowledge that there were indigenous cultures
on Freenet that deserved to be respected and preserved, while allowing new
and different cultures to be created.  Instead, we got a mass extinction.

        By not enforcing (or allowing sysops to enforce) the prevailing
congenial community standards, Freenet became a rough place that wasn't
much fun to visit, if alt.flame-behavior wasn't to your taste.  When
it was dialup-only, someone would have to have been pretty financially
motivated to call in long-distance to play around.  And of course, by the
end, modem pools were old, creaky, and unreliable, so even connecting was
a hassle.

        In my view, CWRU created a community, then allowed it to be
destroyed, and then used the fact that it was now a wasteland to justify
not putting anything else into it.  No vision.

        I'm sure it was a hassle for you, Bob, and everyone else on the
inside who had to do the gruntwork and maintenance with no support.  But
for those on the outside, who had been part of the *community*, we really
felt hung out to dry by CWRU.  Especially when CWRU *did* try to tout it
as a big thing when they were knowingly not putting anything back into it.

        I value interactive communities.  Perhaps it's the age I am, perhaps
it's the computers that I've called my hobbies (which needed communities to
survive).  Whatever your favorite community, or community format (mailing
list, newsgroup, chat, etc.), respect other communities.

        YMMV,

        *Rich*
-- 
Richard F. Drushel, Ph.D.            | "Aplysia californica" is your taxonomic
Department of Biology, Slug Division | nomenclature.  /  A slug, by any other
Case Western Reserve University      | name, is still a slug by nature.
Cleveland, Ohio  44106-7080  U.S.A.  |     -- apologies to Data, "Ode to Spot"