From Newsgroup: sci.physics

William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:

I actually learned something in sci.physics! That takes me back ...

But the exact date when it takes you back is not clear,
since people complaining that this newsgroup was turning
into some pointless chatter spot goes way back!

|Well, the backbone SAs botched another newsgroup changeover. It seems
|quite obvious that sci.physics should be renamed talk.physics, and the
|sooner the better. The few physics articles--even when stretching the |meaning of the word as much as rumor used to be stretched--could just
|as well be accommodated in sci.misc.
|
|ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720

From: Matthew P Wiener <weemba@brahms>
Newsgroups: net.news.group,sci.physics
Subject: talk.physics
Date: 21 Oct 1986 07:23:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: cartan.43


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From Newsgroup: sci.physics

Stefan Ram wrote:

William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote or quoted:

I actually learned something in sci.physics! That takes me back ...

But the exact date when it takes you back is not clear,

since people complaining that this newsgroup was turning
into some pointless chatter spot goes way back!

About thirty years in my case.

Some friends were occasionally posting on some group called (I think), sci.electromagnetism, where most posts were about problems from Jackson
and the like. One friend was working on the electric fields inside
raindrops - with spherical inclusions of, e.g. dust - and found the
group useful (rather amazing things happen inside a raindrop).

Then on one fateful day came the post:

"What can we do about this gravity thing anyway?"

and the group was flooded with True Believers. Worse, with True
Believers who disagreed with each other and argued incessantly as to
just which of them knew the science that those silly/conspiratorial/ nonexistent physicists wouldn't tell the world, or did not know.

Filters were not as good then (they kill 90% of the posts here now) and everyone actually interested in electromagnetism left the group.


William Hyde

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