Dudes:

The newsgroup-versus-maillist thread pops up here about once every
six months... Each time, the OVERWHELMING concensus is that no one
wants to "convert" the list to a newsgroup.

Moreover, there are strong arguments even against forming an
automated "gateway" connection between the list and a newsgroup...
Automatically copying to the list all the crap that'll appear on the
newsgroup will give us the worst of both worlds, and copying in the
other direction will put all the list-members' e-mail addresses out
in the open where they can be added to junk-mail mailing lists.

If anyone wants to start a PIC-centric newsgroup, that's fine... Just
go to news.announce.newsgroups and start the process.  But don't
expect to find a lot of support here for any connection between the
existing list and that newsgroup.

Oh... And whatever you do, please don't ever ask for a "vote" here
on the list (on this or any other topic) without an explicit
instruction -- repeated a couple of times in all caps, preferably --
that all votes are to be sent to you in PRIVATE e-mail rather than to
the list at large.  There are over 1200 members of the PICLIST; no
one wants to read "I agree" or "I vote no" messages from each of
them.

-Andy

Andrew Warren - fastfwd@ix.netcom.com
Fast Forward Engineering, Vista, California
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/2499