[AF] Cleaning up the Alternate Airwaves.

[Lamar Owen]

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Barry, thank you for taking the time to run this list.  As a member of what 
some will term the far right, I applaud your stand, and will do my best to, 
when I post, remember those statements.

To all those who are so polarized: Barry is right.  There are plenty of 
forums, lists, etc out there to argue all sorts of things.  AF has of late 
been a cesspool of topics, none of which are even tangential to broadcasting 
(it's the Alternate Frequency list, not the Anything Forum!).

I would see topics on this list as being possibly technical but nonbroadcast 
(like how to set up BGP and HSRP on Cisco IOS 12.4 on a pair of 7401ASR's 
with Stateful NAT failover and an OC3 APS 1+1 WAN link, to pull a topic off 
the top of my head (it happens to be how I get my primary internet 
connection, so it's something I can speak about halfway intelligently!)); 
topics that are broadcast content related but not broadcast (acoustics 
discussions, PA amp discussions, compression algorithm listening comparisons, 
etc); or even history discussions and how broadcasting has changed history 
(hmmph, if the Internet and modern cable news had been around during 
Germany's reconstruction after World War II, how many would have lost 
patience with the TEN YEAR LONG West German independence process?  Or, for 
that matter, with the staggering casualties of WWII would we have bailed 
before winning the island hopping campaign, where more men were killed per 
hour than the total that has been killed in both Gulf Wars? ) - perhaps 
those, if personal and political invective could be eliminated, would be 
appropriate subjects here that wouldn't necessarily be so for BC.

Barry, would a periodic FAQ posting be something you'd be interested in?  If 
you could seed a FAQ I can set up an autoposter, if you'd like.  This FAQ 
would include the list's charter and the groundrules.

And, regardless of what anyone might say, this is Barry's list.  You don't 
like his rules?  Go elsewhere.  This is not a free speech issue; this is a 
press issue, and, just like a newspaper editor has discretion on what letters 
to editor to publish, a mailing list (or blog, or whatever) editor/moderator 
has discretion on what gets published by his press; mailing lists are not 
speech, but a press.  Radio is speech; the Internet is press.  The owner of 
the press has the freedom to say through that press whatever he wants, 
including editing articles submitted by contributors; we subscribers to this 
press are mere contributors with Barry having editorial oversight.

Now, if you reply to the individual author directly, you can say whatever you 
wish, but you cannot force Barry to republish through the list software 
things he doesn't wish to publish.  These are the realities of e-mail and 
e-mail lists; grow up and get used to them.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Chief Information Officer
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu