Hello All.    ...Before I get wordy, I'll toss out a few questions
that are the main thrust of this message:

Is anyone still in touch with former MooseChat participants who might
participate again if MooseChat was "gated" to the alt.moose ng?

Have changes in the political environment made anyone uncomfortable
with the idea of writing messages that would end up in a UseNet
newsgroup available over the Internet?

Is "gating" worth doing for the mere "coolness" of the
idea?  If so,
who will be writing the MooseChat messages?  IOW, will there be much
actual message traffic to gate?


Background:       ...Late in January we had a short message exchange
about my possibly starting to "gate" MooseChat to the alt.moose UseNet
newsgroup.  A few people thought it was a neat idea, providing we used
a "manually run gateway" to definitely block Internet spam or
obscenity from this FidoNet echo.

                                 ...What did not materialize was any
benefit from doing so.  For it to be worth doing, I thought that we
should find out if any former participants would return to MooseChat
if it was available via the alt.moose newsgroup.  So far, I've not
heard of any such people, so I'll issue a final request for anyone in
touch with former participants like Mike Jenkinson and Jim Hansen to
pass on the query.  (Their e-mail replies can be sent to me at my
hart{at}io.com address.  With the amount of spam these days, they might
want to mention MooseChat in the message subject line.)

In late August Paul showed up again, and got an almost automatic
query from me.  At first, it looked like he would finally provide my
"justification" but instead he joined FidoNet again.  While it's great
when someone rejoins FidoNet, I'm again left with no concrete benefit
for "gating" MooseChat to alt.moose...

Maybe gating MooseChat to alt.moose is something worth doing for the
sheer fun of it?  On the other hoof, things have changed in the world
since January.  Political satire has been a large part of MooseChat,
our "Moose and Hoser 'Canadian Humor' Chat echo".  In recent years
many of the "Saddam" and "George Bush" messages
originated from my
node, but "recent" events in the Middle East have not been overly
amusing to me.  As well, tolerance for political satire may be low
right now, which makes me wonder whether we want to be writing
anything much that would be "gated" to an Internet newsgroup.

        ...So, I'm now personally ambivalent _but_ still willing to
go ahead.  I mainly ended up as MooseChat moderator because I was in
the right place to handle the necessary administrative trivia, and I'm
still comfortable with doing things like getting alt.moose configured
by groups.google.com.  (Maintaining a "moose-like atmosphere" will be
much easier if the newsgroup is archived.)  However, I may not be able
to generate much message traffic.  Still, that may not be too much of
a downside.  Paul is better at witty satire than I am.  If I can lure
Carl back into participating, he is a master of PUNishing prose.
People like Jack, Mike and Don also have their own style of humour.
This assumes that enough of us find the time and motivation to post
regularly.  Summing up:

While I'll certainly try to indulge in my usual satire or silliness, I
will not be able to "carry" the message area.  I guess I'm hoping for
a return to MooseChat as a place where "we take our silliness
seriously", but I'm straying from the message topic.  I guess I'm
also hinting that it would be stupid to ask a favor at Google.com and
start the gateway -- only to find that I was trying to "gate" an empty
echo into an abandoned newsgroup.


Yours in the Way of the Moose,     ...Steve

-
"There is a time a place for use of antlers."  --  Miyamoto Moosashi

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