To da Joisey Boyze

Hey youse guys:
To help you understand the ruckus you are causing here, let me put it
another way.

Imagine that you guys are all sitting around telling your stories,
having lots of little fun converstations, and making your rules to
guide your little chats. Lets even imagine that you are doing it
electronically, through a membership-driven chat group. Fine.

Then suddenly, some system administrator decides that he wants to make
it seem like MORE people are involved in your little group. So he does
the equivalent of stick a microphone in the middle of your room and
broadcast your little membership-driven chat over a loudspeaker for
another whole group to hear.

Considering that the whole other group (USENET) has its own procotols,
etiquitte, rules, social dynamics, etc., your sudden appearance there
is, to say the least, invasive. Some of the rules of USENET are not
just tradition...they are driven by the structure of the format, and
the fact that many people worldwide have to pay for access, and pay
for downloading stuff. For example, we don't post binaries here
(pictures) because the files are too big. We don't post word documents
here because they don't show. We also don't do several other things
for various reasons. Its your job to find out what those things
are...which is hard if you think you're still all alone in your little
chat group in New Jersey.

Whether you like it or not, your stupid site admin stuck that stupid
microphone right in the middle of your chat group and is broadcasting
your site here. We don't mind if some, or all, of you want to join
USENET...as long as you realize that its NOT the New Jersey Flyfishing
forum.

So far, polite requests to have the damn microphone removed have
failed. Things on rofft have gotten slightly ugly, with name calling,
etc. One of the traditions here on roff is that we reserve the OT,
chit chat and namecalling bull**** to roff and preserve rofft for On
Topic and helpful stuff. So you're stepping all over that.

So help us help you: contact your sysadmin and have him unlink USENET
from your chat group. Those of you who want to broaden your horizons,
come join roff.

But remember...your little in-house conversations are being broadcast
all over the world, in other people's houses, and you don't get to
make all the rules.

--riverman