🚀 go-pugleaf

For readers in this newsgroup who are aware of the ottawa 
"charter" wars raging on, but who cannot follow the multitude
of threads and disjoint discussions taking place in several 
newsgroups at once, here is the latest update, and an explanation 
of what is going on.

The whole thing started when one individual, Gordon Dewis, 
who is a member of a group called ONAG asked in ott.general 
if participants want to have cross-posted discussions.

Cross-posting means that when you post an article to a 
newsgroup you add other newsgroups to the newsgroup header. 
For example if you look at my article here you will see that 
I cross-posted it to 
    ott.education.misc  
    can.legal
    ott.config
    can.config 
  
These are newsgroups that I follow on a regular basis, and 
are also groups that have had sporadic postings (some of 
which have since been cancelled by Gordon Dewis) on this 
topic. 

ott.education.misc has been the beneficiary of cross-posts 
for many years.

Back to Gordon Dewis and ott.general.

Several people responded to Gordon Dewis in ott.general and 
the gist was:"Ya, let's get rid of those nasty cross-posters, 
all those feminists and all other weirdos". A small minority
objected but was drowned in the commotion.

Gordon did not take long. About one day after posting his 
original question in ott.general, and without any formal
announcements, he went ahead and cancelled ALL messages 
cross-posted into  ott.general. 

I was not aware of this discussion until a day later when 
I happened to see a reference to it in can.config. I have 
always relied heavily on cross-posting, and this topic is 
near and dear to my heart. I sometimes participate in 
non-cross-posted threads in ott.general, but this is the 
exception.

So I headed over to ott.general and painstakingly started 
responding to the thread trying to explain to some of the 
hotheads why cross-posting should be permitted. In the process 
of doing so, I cross-posted my messages to pertinent groups. 
I had no inkling that Gordon Dewis was already canceling 
all cross-posts only a day after asking the question (talk 
about web speed :-)

I spent at least an hour responding to messages, debating 
the pros and cons, in general trying to raise what I thought 
were valid concerns.

After about an hour I went to check something I had written 
earlier and could not find it. I then realized that most of 
my follow-ups had vanished. At some point it finally dawned 
on me that Gordon had already activated the cancellation 
machine.

I am sure many of you can understand how frustrating this 
can be. One might also speculate that others who objected 
to this enforcement, and who  cross-posted their objections 
were also being silenced as I was, by way of a cancellation.

At this point it seemed like the only logical solution was 
to try and move the discussion to another newsgroup (can.config), 
one that did not enforce a no-cross-posting policy. Unfortunately, 
this almost always creates disjoint discussions and, in itself, 
a good argument for why cross-posting is a good thing.

Back to Gordon Dewis.

As things stand now, you cannot cross-post to ott.general. 
There are discussions about maybe allowing cross-posting back 
in later, maybe not.

As far as I am concerned, the damage has been done. I do not 
wish to participate in a group that at will, and with very 
little warning, will cancel my messages. 
--
Donate blood
http://www.bloodservices.ca/Ontario/Ottawa/index.html