If your criteria is to provoke a lot of responses then political posts
are a good method. However, I would note that there are plenty
political newsgroups....

I acheive my political catharsis though a blog rather than polluting a
woodworking group: http://www.politicalparables.blogspot.com/ To post
off-topic material to a news group is a form of spam. In fact this
response and the thread to which it belongs is spam.

If your intention is to promote and foster woodworking discussions
then well-written informative on-topic post is the way to go. Not
having the clutter of off-topic post makes perusing the newsgroup for
woodworking stuff a much more pleasurable experience.

The woodworkers I work with have stopped visiting rec.woodworking
because of the political posts. They've found more informative
moderated newsgroups elsewhere -- wood central, for example.

I'm glad you've pledged not to experiment with politics on the wreck.
I wish many more would follow your exampe. Thanks.

Let's get back to talking chisels, planes, routers, table saws,
finishes, dovetails, mortise and tenon, etc. Now wonder how many times
this e-mail will show up because someone does a search on dovetails?
What a waste that this one would show up!


Tom Watson wrote in message . ..
Over the course of the past few months I have initiated a number of
threads about Politics.

In some cases I just sailed off the paper airplane and watched what
happened.

In other instances I have provided interlinear encouragement to keep
the thread active.

Th Debil made me do it.

During the same compass of time I have started threads that were
solely about WoodDorking.

While the Political threads bloomed and branched, in sum total
creating over a thousand responses - the WoodDorking threads yielded
less than a hundred.



We pretend, us Wreckers, to despise the intercession of the Politic -
yet we jump all over it like a starving dog on a meatwagon.

We lie to ourselves.

From November of 1994 until three months ago, I said nary a word about
Politics on the Wreck.

On the odd instance that I referred to it at all, it was with
disapprobation.

Still, we stewed in the discussions from time to time and all of us
were culpable.


Do I think that the Wreck should be "Politics Free"? Of course not.
That would be unnatural - and I have always found the Wreck to be the
most natural realm of public discourse - given that its main intent is
that of WoodDorking.


I have heard the Wreck described as a neigborhood tavern, mostly
frequented by WoodDorkers.

I have seen it described as a simulacrum of a country store, with a
fine pot-bellied stove, around which we all gather to spin our tales
and trade information - mostly about WoodDorking.


Most of us had Mommas that educated us to the degree that we would not
introduce The Big Three into conversations with either strangers or
friends - Sex, Religion, and Politics. Lordy, were we not paying
attention?


Y'all do what you want - my personal experiment with talking Politics
on the Wreck is over.


You have my personal pledge that I will not initiate, nor will I
respond to any thread that has to do with Politics.


However, it would be nice, if the next time that someone starts a
thread about Design, or Joinery, or Finishing - that the Group, as a
whole, showed it the same level of involvement that has heretofore
been resrved for Politics, or Religion, or Sex.

MHO

YMMV





Regards,
Tom.

"People funny. Life a funny thing." Sonny Liston

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.)
tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)
http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1