"Jan Mikkelsen" wrote in message
...
/Jan "One who would hate to see also ROFF die"
You may set your mind at ease, Jan.....the much anticipated death of ROFF
simply isn't going to happen. The only thing that COULD make it happen is
for all those who wring their hands and rend their clothing in despair over
the dreadful conditions here to have their wish come true. Enthusiasm for a
beloved avocation like fly fishing is understandable (and even
admirable.....at least for those of us who share that enthusiasm and have
reason to find it defensible) but the activity, for all its complexity and
lifelong value to participants, is too cramped and narrowly focused to
sustain a vibrant community discussion through eternity. The ideal ROFF
that many envision is a lot like the classic picture of the Christian
heaven.....nice climate, and you don't have to worry about
mosquitoes.....but a couple of eons of singing hosannas would find the vast
majority bolting for the nearest exit and jostling for space on the first
commuter train to hell. Those few who missed the last train would then
settle down to an interminable polite discussion about the true nature of
God (otherwise known as "the best knot for attaching leader to fly line")
until the sponsors decided that "HeavenŽ" was no longer a viable commodity
and closed it down due to lack of interest, leaving the last few holdouts to
ruminate that having an immortal soul isn't quite as peachy as the
advertising brochures made it look. They would then spend the rest of
eternity (a much longer time than most people suppose) wandering from one
moderate forum to another, searching for yet another opinion on the best
floatant, and leaving each as they successively went tits up, all the while
wearing large stinking birds suspended from thongs around their necks.
But, if wishes were fishes......
Or, as friends down south back in the day used to say, "Wish in one hand and
**** in the other......see which fills up faster."
Meanwhile, ROFF plods on. The imminent demise predicted by so many for so
long has failed to materialize, and all the evidence used in support of this
hoary perennial millennial prognostication is nothing more than chimerical
crap. Take, for example, "Salmobyte's" recent revelation that traffic in
ROFF is down by 80% from some halcyon (though unspecified) golden age. By
my (admittedly rough) count, there were about 165 new threads (5 and change
per day, on average) begun in this newsgroup in March of this year and,
according to Google:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.o...hing.fly/about there were
1900 (61 per day)individual messages. If this represents just 20% (100-80)
of the usual, then it follows that there used to be 825 (5 x 20%) new
threads each month (27 per day) and 9500 individual messages (306 per day).
Looking at the chart displayed at the above address, I have failed to find
anything that supports those numbers.....or anything approaching
them......but then, it only goes back as far as mid 1994. Maybe the good
old days were earlier. Anyway, the heaviest traffic I could find was in
January of 2002, with 6375 messages. I'm content to leave judgments about
relative content, tone, worth, etc., between then and now as an exercise for
anyone who may be interested.
As for the current crisis........YAWN! Again, I think a single example
should suffice to typify the whole. So, Mike is gonna be the destroyer of
ROFF, huh? Well, this is every bit as ambitious an enterprise as his former
bid to be its raison d'etre, and there is ample reason to be certain that it
will be every bit as successful. O.k., but at least he is completely
justified in his feelings (if not necessarily his proposed solution) about
what he has been subjected to here in the last year or two.....right? No.
He has, as he well knows, brought this upon himself. Yeah, in a sense,
because he has no control over how others react to his eminently helpful,
logical, and indisputable advice......right? Wrong. He has brought this
upon himself DELIBERATELY, and for the same reasons as the rest of the
entirely self-conscious gaggle of disruptive morons here......or we are left
to suppose that he (and they) are actually so stupid as to be completely
mystified by the rudiments of cause and effect. Anyone who, at this late
date, still believes that Mike is getting anything other than exactly what
he wants from this group NEEDS to find a place where he or she can be told
what to read, what to write, what to think, and what to believe.
Meanwhile, ROFF plods on. Where they exist (and, as pretty much everyone
knows, their distribution is virtually worldwide) pests like mosquitoes (or
stevies, kennies, mikies, davies.....and dicklets) are a fact of life that
people simply have to deal with one way or another. Wishing them out of
existence will never work. In fact, getting worked up into a lather and
loudly cursing the gods raises both body surface temperature and carbon
dioxide exhalation, both of which serve as beacons for mosquitoes and
increase their activity. Likewise, the humunculoid pests in Usenet operate
on precisely the same principle. Even perfectly reasonable declamations on
the sadness of the whole sorry mess serve (as has been, and will continue to
be, demonstrated yet again in this thread) merely serve to fan the
flames....it is EXACTLY what they want. Returning to the minuscule winged
annoyances, the only effective way to deal with them on an individual basis
is to swat them whenever they come within range, and keep swatting as long
as they continue to appear. The trouble with metaphors, of course, is that
they are models, and a model is, by definition, lacking in one or more of
the essential features of that which is modeled. One can metaphorically
swat Usenet pests (and one certainly shouldn't miss any opportunity to do
so) but they don't die. Alternatively (or in combination), one can (and,
again, certainly should) see them for what they truly are.....self-made
toys.....and deal with them accordingly. They hate it. Eventually they
will pretend (however briefly and unconvincingly) that you don't exist until
the irresistible urge overtakes them again and they present themselves for
another swatting.
Bottom line: Life presents many intractable problems that will consume as
much of a person as he or she will allow. Everyone should take time out to
play with the ****-weasels. It makes the world a better place.......and
keeps ROFF alive, vital, and interesting.
Wolfgang