John Lupien says:
> There is some history available for evaluating the impact of turning
> an enthusiasts' mailing list into a newsgroup.
Quite a bit. This is what went on with the racers mailing list, started
in the mid-Eighties by Rich Welty. The charter of the list was to provide
a clearinghouse of information for people involved in motorsports
competition of some kind. The laws of economics being what they are,
most of the participants were autocrossers, but there were some club
racers, even one or two rallyists, and for all I know some circle-
trackers and drag-racers too.
When the list got big enough, Richard did the RFD and got rec.autos.sport
created, with originally the same charter. That changed little by little.
About three years ago, Andy Banta (then a Britcars list member) got tired
of killing juvenile arguments ("Ayrton Senna is GOD!"/"No he isn't, Dale
Earnhardt could kick his BUTT!"/"You're both stupid, Dale Coyne RULES!!!")
and started the wheeltowheel mailing list, whose provision for membership
was that you had to be involved, as the name suggested, in wheel-to-wheel
motorsports of some kind. (The technical issues, rules, and classes are
different enough from autocrossing that the autox mailing list -- which,
if anything, prospered after rec.autos.sport's creation -- that Andy made
a separate list. It's been a generally intelligent, useful list since
then, much like the Britcars list as long as you don't use the word
"commercial".)
Maybe a newsgroup would bring down the level on the mailing list to a
degree that it would be manageable for those who want to keep it. I'm
not convinced that a British Cars newsgroup is a bad idea, but I'm
reasonably sure that I won't read it or post to it. Who knows, maybe
it'll be more like ba.food or rec.food.cooking than like rec.autos.sport.
Somehow I don't think so, given the rest of the hierarchy.
Roland says:
> The best argument against turning british-cars into a newsgroup is to
> spend a few minutes reading one of the rec.autos.* groups.
Exactly.
Maybe there should be a rec.autos.british. I might even vote for it.
But I really don't believe that I'll read it or post to it.
--Scott "I know, let's sell AD SPACE on the NEWSGROUP!" Fisher
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