When new people show up, I sometimes try to warn them: here's your partial list of Instant Flamewar topics--piracy, drm, price-of-ebooks, geo-restrictions, amazon, pdf. Any thread centered on those--read all you like, make up your own mind; don't expect to persuade anyone of anything 'cos we have heard it *all* before and you're unlikely to find any new info to throw at us until you've read way too much random copyright wank.
Every once in a while, I bring up sexism in the thin hope that I'll see something other than five pages of "pseudonyms means you don't know what gender authors are, so how can you say there's any discrimination?" and "women dominate the romance industry; that means they get equal treatment as authors." I don't bring up racism or other forms of oppression.
What they do well is non-US-centrism, non-English-centrism. There are constant polite reminders that US copyright law isn't worldwide, and they welcome comments & questions about ebook/tech issues in countries that aren't the US.
They also manage to mostly not have factions--people can disagree vehemently on DRM rights and stand together on what's necessary for good ebook formatting; they can agree on Amazon's usefulness (or lack thereof) and disagree on best length of copyright. And the personal attacks really are kept to a minimum, with a nod to the fact that any 5-page or more thread about DRM is going to have some namecalling.
no subject
When new people show up, I sometimes try to warn them: here's your partial list of Instant Flamewar topics--piracy, drm, price-of-ebooks, geo-restrictions, amazon, pdf. Any thread centered on those--read all you like, make up your own mind; don't expect to persuade anyone of anything 'cos we have heard it *all* before and you're unlikely to find any new info to throw at us until you've read way too much random copyright wank.
Every once in a while, I bring up sexism in the thin hope that I'll see something other than five pages of "pseudonyms means you don't know what gender authors are, so how can you say there's any discrimination?" and "women dominate the romance industry; that means they get equal treatment as authors." I don't bring up racism or other forms of oppression.
What they do well is non-US-centrism, non-English-centrism. There are constant polite reminders that US copyright law isn't worldwide, and they welcome comments & questions about ebook/tech issues in countries that aren't the US.
They also manage to mostly not have factions--people can disagree vehemently on DRM rights and stand together on what's necessary for good ebook formatting; they can agree on Amazon's usefulness (or lack thereof) and disagree on best length of copyright. And the personal attacks really are kept to a minimum, with a nod to the fact that any 5-page or more thread about DRM is going to have some namecalling.