rec.collecting.books.moderated

If I may wax slightly self-important for a moment, I do believe one of
the reasons this group has gone downhill is that I stopped acting as
"Bad Cop" when I moved into my new house and changed ISPs several
months ago.

As many old-timers may remember, I used to post the "NO FS" message
quite frequently. I also warned every spammer about the FAQ, and
reported every repeat spammer to their ISP (and eBay, where
applicable). After a while, I got tired of warning idiots who tried to
argue back, dispensed with the warning entirely, and went into "silent
assassin" mode by reporting spammers upon the first offense (and many
persistant trolls upon subsequent offenses). I have no doubt that this
helped reduce the overall noise of the group.

Frankly. since the move I've been too busy to do all of that. I've been
selling books on TomFolio, through my website, and eBay. writing a lot
of paying non-fiction (including several reviews with Howard Waldrop on
Locus Online), and just generally not posting to Usenet. When you come
right down to it, Usenet Simply Isn't Important. At best it can be a
slightly more productive use of your time than watching TV or playing
video games. At it's worst it leaches time from doing actually
productive tasks.

But all that said, if someone creates rec.collecting.books.moderated, I
will agree to moderate it. I will be a kind and benevolent diety for
those who obey the FAQ, and a terrible god of wrath for those
transgress it...

In article .com,
wrote:

If I may wax slightly self-important for a moment, I do believe one of
the reasons this group has gone downhill is that I stopped acting as
"Bad Cop" when I moved into my new house and changed ISPs several
months ago.

I think to one extent or another that's quite right.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com

wrote in message
oups.com...
If I may wax slightly self-important for a moment, I do believe one of
the reasons this group has gone downhill is that I stopped acting as
"Bad Cop" when I moved into my new house and changed ISPs several
months ago.

Oh please, the troubles haven't anything to do with FS ads (which are few).
You would be the last person (no pun intended) I would choose to moderate
anything.
You have already proven yourself heavy-handed, intolerant and vindictive -
we may as well let adumbs or palmjob be the moderator!

--
Bob Finnan
http://bobfinnan.com

On 11 Dec 2004 23:25:23 -0800, wrote:

If I may wax slightly self-important for a moment, I do believe one of
the reasons this group has gone downhill is that I stopped acting as
"Bad Cop" when I moved into my new house and changed ISPs several
months ago.

As many old-timers may remember, I used to post the "NO FS" message
quite frequently. I also warned every spammer about the FAQ, and
reported every repeat spammer to their ISP (and eBay, where
applicable). After a while, I got tired of warning idiots who tried to
argue back, dispensed with the warning entirely, and went into "silent
assassin" mode by reporting spammers upon the first offense (and many
persistant trolls upon subsequent offenses). I have no doubt that this
helped reduce the overall noise of the group.

Frankly. since the move I've been too busy to do all of that. I've been
selling books on TomFolio, through my website, and eBay. writing a lot
of paying non-fiction (including several reviews with Howard Waldrop on
Locus Online), and just generally not posting to Usenet. When you come
right down to it, Usenet Simply Isn't Important. At best it can be a
slightly more productive use of your time than watching TV or playing
video games. At it's worst it leaches time from doing actually
productive tasks.

But all that said, if someone creates rec.collecting.books.moderated, I
will agree to moderate it. I will be a kind and benevolent diety for
those who obey the FAQ, and a terrible god of wrath for those
transgress it...

I've never been a fan of moderated groups, for any of a number of
reasons, not the least of which is that they seem to ultimately
attract less traffic. I don't think this group is really any worse
off today than it was four or five years ago. Scott nailed one of the
problems in his OP: Many of us are collectors in a fairly narrow
specialty and tend not to post much on general subjects. If William
posts an essay on a particularly fascinating associational item of
convertiana, I'm certainly going to read it, but I'm very unlikely to
have anything to offer to continue the thread. By the same token, I
won't have much to offer when Bob posts something informative on
series books.

I suspect that this holds true for many here; there's a general love
of books that brings us all here, but the areas of specialty are so
different that it's unlikely that anything but a very generic is going
to have a lot of people chiming in.

Do we need a moderated group? Probably not, do we need the FAQ posted
regularly? Probably so. As to annoying posters, anyone with a
newsreader can elect to ignore the trolls like Palmjob and Barker.
There are certainly other posters (myself included) that some may find
irritating, and for these one must make a choice of missing an
interesting message because they don't care for the messenger, or not.
The latter group frequently have intersting and insightful things to
say and IMHO are well worth reading. Hoppy and Bleach-bottle Bill have
little knowledge of books and nothing whatsoever to say that's
worthwhile and one risks nothing by consigning them to a killfile.


Cheers,

John

"John Pelan" wrote in message
...

Scott nailed one of the
problems in his OP: Many of us are collectors in a fairly narrow
specialty and tend not to post much on general subjects. If William
posts an essay on a particularly fascinating associational item of
convertiana, I'm certainly going to read it, but I'm very unlikely to
have anything to offer to continue the thread. By the same token, I
won't have much to offer when Bob posts something informative on
series books.

I suspect that this holds true for many here; there's a general love
of books that brings us all here, but the areas of specialty are so
different that it's unlikely that anything but a very generic is going
to have a lot of people chiming in.



John, there is truth in this notion--but it's not the whole story.

Personally, I try to find something of interest in most serious
posts--perhaps my collecting interest is such that it allows for cross
pollination more easily (because the converts I'm interested in are
everywhere):

Is the subject classical music? (Fritz Kreisler). Jazz? (Dave Brubeck).
Sculpture? (Frederick Hart.) Classic detective fiction? (G.K.
Chesterton). Ghost stories? (Russell Kirk). Modern conservative thought?
(Ditto). Harlem Renaissance? (Claude McKay). California history? (Peter
Burnett). Transcendentalism? (Orestes Brownson). Modern philosophy?
(G.E.M. Anscombe). Mathematics? (John von Neumann). Decadence? (Take
your pick: Wilde, Beardsley, Huysman). And so on.

But perhaps more importantly, as John Carter reminds us, successful book
collecting requires not only "taste" (knowing what to collect) but
"technique" (knowing how to collect). Technique can cut across our various
specialties--and I think you'll find that that is what keeps many of the
longer threads going. So I've learned a lot here--even for my own
collecting--by reading about collecting in other specialties.


William M. Klimon
http://www.catholicbookcollector.com



BTW: John, congrats on the nice remarks from Michael Dirda, one of my
favorite critics:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Oct28.html

If anyone wants to join an ever-so-slightly moderated group about the Hardy
Boys and all subjects pertaining thereto, my Hardy Boys group has over 400
members and no flames. You don't have to join to read the archives but only
members can post: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HardyBoys/

--
Bob Finnan
http://bobfinnan.com

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 17:47:12 -0500, "William M. Klimon"
wrote:

"John Pelan" wrote in message
.. .

Scott nailed one of the
problems in his OP: Many of us are collectors in a fairly narrow
specialty and tend not to post much on general subjects. If William
posts an essay on a particularly fascinating associational item of
convertiana, I'm certainly going to read it, but I'm very unlikely to
have anything to offer to continue the thread. By the same token, I
won't have much to offer when Bob posts something informative on
series books.

I suspect that this holds true for many here; there's a general love
of books that brings us all here, but the areas of specialty are so
different that it's unlikely that anything but a very generic is going
to have a lot of people chiming in.



John, there is truth in this notion--but it's not the whole story.

Personally, I try to find something of interest in most serious
posts--perhaps my collecting interest is such that it allows for cross
pollination more easily (because the converts I'm interested in are
everywhere):

Is the subject classical music? (Fritz Kreisler). Jazz? (Dave Brubeck).
Sculpture? (Frederick Hart.) Classic detective fiction? (G.K.
Chesterton). Ghost stories? (Russell Kirk). Modern conservative thought?
(Ditto). Harlem Renaissance? (Claude McKay). California history? (Peter
Burnett). Transcendentalism? (Orestes Brownson). Modern philosophy?
(G.E.M. Anscombe). Mathematics? (John von Neumann). Decadence? (Take
your pick: Wilde, Beardsley, Huysman). And so on.

But perhaps more importantly, as John Carter reminds us, successful book
collecting requires not only "taste" (knowing what to collect) but
"technique" (knowing how to collect). Technique can cut across our various
specialties--and I think you'll find that that is what keeps many of the
longer threads going. So I've learned a lot here--even for my own
collecting--by reading about collecting in other specialties.


William M. Klimon
http://www.catholicbookcollector.com



BTW: John, congrats on the nice remarks from Michael Dirda, one of my
favorite critics:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Oct28.html



William:

Thanks for the congrats! Ii feel very gratified to have a hand in
getting all of Russell Kirk's stories back into print.

You are quite right in saying that "technique" crosses all aspects of
collecting and there's much to learn from our combined experiences.

To wander off entirely (and to test this theorem) I'll mention one of
my techniques that I don't believe I've seen mentioned on here for
quite some time.

My area of speciality runs to what I call "fantastic fiction",
covering the rather broad areas of supernatural fiction and science
fiction. I'm always on the lookout for works that have eluded the
standard references such as Bleiler and have found the technique of
examining publishers catalogs to be very fruitful. Chances are good
that if a publisher published one book in my area of interest, they
probably issued similar titles. Taking one fairly obscure publisher as
an example (Henry Drane, Drane's Danegeld) and knowing that they had
published several volumes of interest I began checking the extensive
catalogues in volumes that otherwise had absolutely no interest to me
and discovered several interesting supernatural titles that escaped
the notice of the standard references, Another publisher of interest
(and here's where cross-pollination comes in) was Rider (an imprint of
Hutchinson's). Seemingly anything that hinted of metaphysics was of
interest to the folks at Rider so that their books included novels
such as H.B. Gregory's DARK SANCTUARY ( a Lovecraftian novel from a
Christian perspective) and pretty straight forward scholarly works as
well as an astonishing lot of Theospohical psycho-babble. As most of
Rider's printings were comparitively tiny and their warehouse was
destoryed in the Blitz, there's a pretty fair chance that I'll turn up
a couple of books of interest sooner or later.

Cheers,

John


www.darksidepress.com

John, that's excellent advice! But have
you ever simply "dropped in" to the
publisher's warehouse? Some small
and some not so small outfits have little
retail outlets, unadvertised, attached. I've
picked up some lovely items heavilly
discounted at the Dover warehouse store
which is about a half hour's drive from my home.
--Dave Conford

In article ,
wrote:

John, that's excellent advice! But have
you ever simply "dropped in" to the
publisher's warehouse? Some small
and some not so small outfits have little
retail outlets, unadvertised, attached. I've
picked up some lovely items heavilly
discounted at the Dover warehouse store
which is about a half hour's drive from my home.
--Dave Conford


Dave,

It would really be great if you'd quote a few lines from the article to
which you're responding so that folks could have a context for your
reply. Because of the way that Usenet propagation works, you can never
be sure that people have already seen the article to which you're
responding.

TIA,

Scot

Scot Kamins wrote:

Dave,

It would really be great if you'd quote a few lines from the article to
which you're responding so that folks could have a context for your
reply. Because of the way that Usenet propagation works, you can never
be sure that people have already seen the article to which you're
responding.

Absolutely. Dave, you appear mysteriously in the "Now Here's a Collectible
Proof!" saying, apparently in response to a posting by Bob Reidel:

To Bob F:
Please give me SOME credit.

A check of other posts in the thread shows that you are probably saying this
in response to Bob Finnan's comment that you must be a Republican, but when
I saw your comment I did not realise that and was merely mystified.

To make things clear, you need to post your reply to the person who made the
comment, and you need to include enough of their original comment to make
the context clear to other users.

Anyway, welcome to rec.collecting.books!

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com