Moderation has been lifted.
I offered an olive branch to Lee by allowing him to return to Stellalist
but he insisted on an apology first, which I feel is absurd given that it
was _his_ act which led to his expulsion (which was not intended to be
permanent), so just remember that I was willing to bury the hatchet and he
wasn't as he spearheads his rival mailing list, all the more significant
if you were priveleged enough to catch a little of the venom he spewed my
way when I did not instantly resubscribe him.
As far as I can see, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. People seem to be
writing games together on this mailing list just fine as it is. Despite
my stance on piracy I have tried my best to encourage programming and
creating a group-think atmosphere. More specifically I have shared my
thoughts from my long hours with the original 2600 programmers as to how
it's best to develop games and what makes great classic gameplay and I
feel that this has helped provide continued motivation and possibly upped
the quality of games that might otherwise have been abandoned too soon.
In addition, the contest still stands, with the winner to be announced in
April--such is the carrot I'm placing in front of you all to encourage you
to code.
Lastly, as I said before, I still have plenty of commented original source
code for highly advanced 2600 games that needs to be transcribed which
will eventually be of great interest for programmers to study.
I'm not here to badger anyone who has subscribed for the purpose of
programming the 2600 or fostering development. But regardless of logic or
differences of opinion on the matter, I have a firm policy restricting
copyrighted BIN postings and like any list-maintainer I reserve the right
to keep the list on-topic and peaceful and to exercise all the
administrative list functions. Yet some people have an innate resentment
of authority and can not accept any limits imposed on them. This seems to
be a common thread in the RGVC demographic. These people should stick to
newsgroups.
I can't please everyone.
I've been guilty in the past for participating in flamewars here and using
my power to get in the last word but in the future if it looks like a
flamewar will develop I will drop the list into moderated mode and just
muffle it so that the only posts that make it through are productive and
germaine to the topic of 2600 programming. I will filter out BOTH sides
of the argument. I will not only filter out posts against me.
Philosophical debates are best left for RGVC.
I'm also subscribed to the Starblazers list and it is overflowing with
off-topic posts about "Replacement Killers" right now. Rules are a
necessary and beneficial thing for a mailing-list. Reading newsgroups is
a choice. I skim through subject headers and only read the subjects I
find appealing. Mailing lists rely on the list-maintainer to do the
filtering.
I hope you all will recognize that it's best to stay on, but if you really
are unhappy here, then by all means unsubscribe. I am not a megalomaniac
and if the new list is indeed just as productive or more, that's great.
Just realize that if the subscription base dwindles, for the sake of unity
I will permanently dissolve the list.
Omar Thameen was kind enough to provide me with a really nice mailing list
for FREE with the HTML-based archive et. al. and I would only hope that
the rival list is as rock-steady as this one on biglist.com has been all
this time because once this list is gone, it's gone.
--
Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/
Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/stella.html
Don't post pirate BINs to Stellalist. Be a programmer, not a pirate.
Write the best game, win framed autographs of famous Atari alumni!!
