Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/12/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]A little bit of political discussion, especially when it is informed and not vituperative, can improve the quality of an email community. The current situation in US national politics is not likely to generate informed intelligent discussion, and has not been doing so. I have no problem at all with a low level of messages about political theories, political principles, and so forth. As long as most of the discussion is about photography, it's fine to have some discussion about things that photographers care about. But in the 25 years that I've been moderating Internet email communities (yes, I started in 1975), I've found that politics, religion, and abortion discussions, during times of national angst about those topics, will drive away many of the most valuable contributors to such communities. If you let too much highly-emotional off-topic traffic in, you tend to lose older people who have seen it all so many times before and who just don't want to go around that topic again. OT: speaking as a physics major with an engineering PhD, I can assure you that keeping 500 pounds of canaries in the air does not change the load on the undercarriage of a truck. 'tis a bird blivet no matter how you arrange it.