Stewart Fleming <
[email protected]> wrote:
> swampy wrote:
>> you read this newsgroup after major races and don't want to know the results? Obviously you're
>> a moron.
> Back in the very old days when this newsgroup began, there was a convention that race results were
> not posted in headers. (*sigh* That was when Willem Boersma and I were about the only ones posting
> Euro results...)
> (Of course, there was also a Usenet convention that ad hominem style comments such as "obviously
> you're a moron" were unacceptable.)
> Both conventions followed more in the breach than the observance these days, it seems.
Back in the very old days it didn't matter if you put the results in the header, at least for us in
the US, because the only TV coverage was taped and internet coverage didn't exist.
Later, as the internet and US cable service matured to begin serving these markets, people
discovered that posting header results upset those that had set their VCRs to tape races while they
were at work. Anytime you throw thousands of people together you find that a non-trivial number of
them have arrested development such that complaining about something will guarantee that it recurrs.
There is, therefore, a near 100% probability that the results of any major race will appear in the
header of some post.
Because of this, I feel the burden should fall on the tiny fraction of people that do not wish to
know race results to not consult a newsgroup where this desire is certain to be violated. If
anyone's day is ruined by seeing results in the header, tough ****. If it's that big of a deal then
people clearly need more going on in their lives.
Anyone that doesn't want to know the result of a race they've taped but not yet seen and still
checks r.b.r is clearly a moron.
I do miss Willem though.
Bob Schwartz
[email protected]