> A newish subscriber myself I must reluctantly ('cos I'm a charitable
> sort) echo Phil's comments about a growing trend. I'd naively
> supposed that one 'chatted' in <sci.agriculture.beekeeping> and
> 'discussed' in BEE-L. Not so it seems, even though many of the
> participants are the same and some threads cross posted. Could it
> not be so ?
 
Well, in an ideal world, maybe, but this ain't it.
 
Too many newbies (and some oldbees too) who haven't gotten control
of the reply function on the their mailer yet, and who are still
unsure of netiquette will always post a lot of noise.
 
Add to this the drunks, the senile, and those who just never will
know, and an umoderated list will *always* have periodic problems.
The growling of the others just raises the noise to signal ratio,
too, unfortunately. We are luckier than most lists by far in that
all our members are fine people, although their priorities naturally
vary.
 
Unfortunately, for using sci.agriculture.beekeeping for chat, USENET
propagation is very unreliable and uneven over the net.  Some
providers only get a small percentage of the posts, and replies and
arguments (read flames) often arrive *before* the original post!
This makes it of questionable usefullness to many of us as a discussion
area.
 
Anyhow, I've offered some solutions in separate posts, and we'll see
if they help.
 
Regards
 
Allen
 
W. Allen Dick, Beekeeper                                         VE6CFK
RR#1, Swalwell, Alberta  Canada T0M 1Y0
Internet:[log in to unmask] & [log in to unmask]
Honey. Bees, & Art <http://www.internode.net/~allend/>