"Johnny Sunset aka Tom Sherman" wrote
Jon Meinecke wrote:

People often mistake USENET newsgroups as sources
for information. Trust the "information" here, at your peril,
indeed!

It is possible for an intelligent and informed person to sort the wheat
from the chaff, and with some research the general credibility of any
regular Usenet poster can be determined with a suitable level of
accuracy.

USENET newsgroups are communities. They vary widely in content
and reliability and inherently dubious as reliable information sources.
An expectation that ARBR or any newsgroup represents all views or a
meritocracy of free ideas is not realistic. Most everyone here
"self censors", and participation is clearly self selected. Some
choose to post not at all, anymore or ever,-- not because their
opinions are uninformed or credibility questionable.

On a moderated/censored forum, a non-moderator does not know what
has been suppressed, and furthermore, no one knows what has been
self-censored out of the fear of being banned from the forum.

Once again, the quality and integrity of the moderation is key,--
the general credibility, as you say. If one understands the rules
and trusts their implementation, then the content of moderated
forums (which includes most every medium) can be calibrated.

A properly designed kitchen, used cooperatively, can accommodate
collaboration of quite a few chefs without overheating.

Usenet is exactly that, for the intelligent reader with proper
analytical skills.

USENET, indeed, like the kitchen is what you/we make it and
make in it. There are moderated and self-moderate USENET
groups. There are groups where flames, vulgar, obscene and
abusive trolling is the norm. There are many groups in the
middle.

To presume that people who choose to participate in other forums
rather than USENET and ARBR, do so mainly for heat avoidance,
ignores other and more credible, intelligent reasons. Be careful
of the fallacy of circumstantial ad hominem.

Jon Meinecke