- Is alt.drugs dead?
Yes. Mostly, anyway. None of the following applies to alt.drugs.caffeine;
in addition, alt.drugs.chemistry and alt.drugs.hard will
be allowed to live on until suitable replacements are found.
- Why is alt.drugs dead?
Because there was an official vote about whether rec.drugs should replace
alt.drugs, and the large majority voted YES. We are currently in a
transition period, when 1 Jan 1996 rolls around alt.drugs will be
removed
entirely. And in case you didn't want rec.drugs, that's too bad, you
were outvoted and democracy is, after all, the tyranny of the majority.
The actual results were:
Yes No : 2/3? >100? : Pass? : Group
---- ---- : ---- ----- : ----- : -------------------------------------------
365 93 : Yes Yes : Yes : rec.drugs.cannabis
356 99 : Yes Yes : Yes : rec.drugs.psychedelic
362 99 : Yes Yes : Yes : rec.drugs.misc
12 invalid votes
- So what should I do?
You should unsubscribe from the alt.drugs.* groups and subscribe to
the rec.drugs.* groups instead. If your system doesn't get them yet,
whine to your system administrator, and while you're at it tell him to
alias alt.drugs.* to rec.drugs.*.
- Now wait a sec, why should I do this?
Because rec.drugs is better. There are a number of reasons:
- rec.drugs is, or at least will be, better propagated than alt.drugs.
That means more people will see your messages if you post them in
rec.drugs.
- All of rec.drugs is equally well propagated. That means that instead
of crossposting to alt.drugs, alt.drugs.psychedelics, alt.drugs.hard
and alt.drugs.culture to get your message about LSD through to everyone,
you can just post it to rec.drugs.psychedelic.
- Therefore rec.drugs has less crossposting. If you read rec.drugs,
you're less likely to have to read the same message over and over
again since some twerp crossposted it to every single group.
- alt.drugs is a mess, and rec.drugs is the only solution to the mess.
New working groups cannot be created in alt.drugs, alt.drugs is
littered with dead and/or stupid groups, etc. rec.drugs is in the
Big 8 hierarchies, so group creation is orderly, bogus groups will
not be added, and especially from the system administrator's point of
view it's a lot more manageable.
- Not using rec.drugs means you are being counterrevolutionary. People
suspected of counterrevolutionary activities will be relocated to a
societal reorientation camp, located near HappyNet, where they will be
forced to read FAQs out loud to people from AOL and Prodigy 7 days a
week and will be fed only Spam. And the only drugs they'll let you
use there are banana skins and LSD that contains strychnine.
Surgeon General's Warning:
Ingesting the previous paragraph without a grain of salt is unhealthy.
- OK, what are the rec.drugs groups?
At the moment there are three:
- rec.drugs.cannabis
The drug cannabis (marijuana).
- rec.drugs.psychedelic
LSD, Ecstasy, magic mushrooms and the like.
- rec.drugs.misc
Stimulants, sedatives, smart drugs etc.
rec.drugs.cannabis is equivalent to alt.drugs.pot, rec.drugs.psychedelic
is equivalent to alt.drugs.psychedelics, and rec.drugs.misc covers the rest.
- Hey! What about the other alt.drugs.* groups then?
- alt.drugs.caffeine lives on. Coffee addicts are encouraged to keep on
using it.
- alt.drugs.chemistry has been granted a temporary stay of execution,
since most of its residents like it. A rec.drugs version is still
likely to appear, but for time being, a.d.chemistry lives on.
- alt.drugs.culture was a pointless group never used for anything other
than crossposts.
- alt.drugs.hard was very, very poorly propagated, but due to
complaints from a small hard core (pun intended) of residents, it
too will be spared for time being. A rec version for this too is in
the works.
- alt.drugs.usenet was a joke group. Use rec.humor instead.
- Why did alt.drugs.pot become rec.drugs.cannabis?
Because "pot" is a uniquely American term that many people outside the US
would not recognize. Cannabis is the genus name for the plants Cannabis
sativa and Cannabis indica, it's known by that name everywhere, and
unlike "pot" it can be used to describe both marijuana and hash.
- Why isn't there a group for left-handed North Dakotans who feed a mix of
PCP and DMT every other Sunday to their pets for medical purposes and
think homosexual pot smokers should be shot?
We wanted to keep the initial rec.drugs hierarchy as simple as possible
to increase the chances of it passing. Future expansion is quite likely,
and some possibilities include:
- rec.drugs.announce (moderated)
- rec.drugs.chemistry (moderated?)
- rec.drugs.ecstasy
- rec.drugs.hard
- rec.drugs.nootropics / rec.drugs.smart
There's probably discussion about this going on in rec.drugs.misc right now.
Gnosis (gnosis@brahman.nullnet.fi)