The Logic Off Topic list

Thoughts from the mind of Jeremy Martin, 26-10-2002:
> >I was just joking, but still, some people don't seem to be able to
> >give this a rest and just wait for the poll to conclude.

Hendrik writes
> On the one hand you say this group is not a democracy but an 
> oligarchy.  Yet you use a democratic mechanism to determine 
> list-policy.  

Yes, exactly. The oligarchy decided, in this particular case, to use 
a poll to decide this issue, since the members were split so evenly 
on it. 

> And at the same time this same democratic mechanism is 
> bound to fail, for reasons explained earlier. Puzzling.  

That "fact" is endlessly debatable...

> Maybe some people have given arguments as to why a poll 
> is bound to be inconclusive or why the validity of the 
> outcome might still be debatable.

Please see my previous two sentences.

> ... since you're not that different.  Not at all.

When did I say I was? I just prefer to do my debating (and talking 
about politics) on lists I'm not an admin of. I guess I'm odd, but 
actually I prefer to do that sort of thing privately, where I think 
it belongs. 

> I think it was Alexis who made a good point when he referred 
> to some extremely boring discussions on the LUG: VST vs AU, 
> etc, or the Mac vs PC debates being routed to the L-OT.  Is 
> any of those really on topic?  A zillion VST/AU messages with 
> extremely little informational contents?  

Now that Emagic is owned by Apple, it makes sense to let people ask 
their questions here about the new plugin format that Emagic is 
promoting. 

If you check the archives, it looks like the whole Mac vs PC thread 
(actually entitled Cubase SX Crossgrade question) was started by an 
innocent question, posted here by Paul Stephenson by his own free 
will. We have never redirected OS wars to this list as far as I know.

Paul Stephenson
> The problem is: where do you draw the border?  At some arbitrary 
> point, apparently.  Because someone decides something is offensive. 
> Or because someone decides something is not appropriate.  Or 
> because 3 or 4 members complain to the moderators.  Or whatever.  
> And it's this arbitrariness (?) that I protest against.

Of course we have to have use an arbitrary point. If we had no rules 
at all, "as this list approaches infinity" a never ending flamewar is 
bound to happen, eventually. I don't think you want us to not use an 
arbitrary point - I think you'd rather we just used your own 
(arguably less) arbitrary point, instead of ours. 

Best wishes,
Jeremy Martin; sadus@...                        
http://www.carrollsweb.com/sadus <-- music links, PC DAW parts list