Russell McMahon wrote...

>...this IS essentially a chat room * that has a number of
>permanent reasonably well defined core threads and one rather
>ubiquitous ill defined core thread.

This "one rather ubiquitous ill defined core thread", as you call
it, happens to be **VERY** well defined in the PICLIST FAQ:

   "[OT]: This label is for posts that are
   completely off the topic of PICs. The
   only thing we don't (ever) want to see
   are religious, hate, or political messages."

The above injunction is there for two very good reasons:

1.  This is the PICLIST.  We're here to talk about PICs and
related matters, primarily in the field of electronics.  Some of
us are here to help others.  Some are here to be helped.  Some of
us are here to compare notes and discuss various techniques for
designing things using PICs.  When you post religious, hate or
political messages to a mailing list which is not devoted to such
material, the resulting arguments can be EXTREMELY disruptive and
divisive.  They poison the atmosphere of the group.  We don't
need that.

2.  Having a large amount of wildly off-topic material flying
about on a mailing list degrades the signal-to-noise ratio.
Simply put, it means that when people abuse the list by arguing
politics on it, I (and, I suspect, most other subscribers) have
to waste a lot of my time wading through a lot of irrelevant
trash to get to the stuff I'm really interested in: PICs.

There are thousands of places on the Internet- in mailing lists,
Usenet groups, chat rooms, and weblogs- where political
discussion is on-topic.  As the PICLIST FAQ indicates clearly and
emphatically, this is **NOT** one of them.

DD

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