In article <mwspitze-111194134719 at phar2.medsurge.hsis.uci.edu>,
matt spitzer <mwspitze at uci.edu> wrote:
>>I agree with this sentiment. But at the same time I recognize that one of
>the reasons that more neuroscientists do not participate in this group is
>that it tends to be heavy on "gimme references" type posts, and light on
>serious discussions of issues in neuroscience.
There are things that newsgroups are much better at than "serious
discussions" -- conference announcements, pointers to electronic
pre-prints, pointers to software tools on the Internet, post-doc and
faculty-job announcements, calls for papers for journals. When I look
at profession-oriented newsgroups that work (example: comp.lsi and
comp.lsi.cad, low-volume newgroups for VLSI chip designers), these
types of things are the bread-and-butter postings that make the group
worth tuning into -- its a consistent regular diet of useful
information, whereas discussions are much more hit-and-miss.
Bionet.neuroscience could easily have a half-dozen of these useful
postings per day, just from the neuroscience-oriented postings and
messages I see on various mailing-lists and newsgroups.
