Quote #296 [about the usenet as elephant horde metaphor] It was Gene Spafford.

Quote #296


[about the usenet as elephant horde metaphor]
It was Gene Spafford. I have it (he posted it himself) as:

In closing, I'd like to repost my 3 axioms of Usenet.
I originally posted these in 1987 and 1988. In my opinion
as a semi-pro curmudgeon, I think they've aged well:

Axiom #1:
"The Usenet is not the real world. The Usenet usually
does not even resemble the real world."
Corollary #1:
"Attempts to change the real world by altering the
structure of the Usenet is an attempt to work sympathetic
magic -- electronic voodoo."
Corollary #2:
"Arguing about the significance of newsgroup names and
their relation to the way people really think is equivalent
to arguing whether it is better to read tea leaves or
chicken entrails to divine the future."
Axiom #2:
"Ability to type on a computer terminal is no guarantee of
sanity, intelligence, or common sense."
Corollary #3:
"An infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of
keyboards could produce something like Usenet."
Corollary #4:
"They could do a better job of it."
Axiom #3:
"Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) applies to
Usenet."
Corollary #5:
"In an unmoderated newsgroup, no one can agree on what
constitutes the 10%."
Corollary #6:
"Nothing guarantees that the 10% isn't crap, too."

Which of course ties in to the recent (1992):
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with
diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring,
entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of
excrement when you least expect it."
-- Gene Spafford