Hi Reena, I guess many join and participate on the goanet for their own varied reasons. To all it is a pastime. Goanet fits between helping our spouses do the household chores like putting the garbage out, painting, gardening. In my case this summer, it was building a 5 ft by 60 ft self-retaining landscape wall.
At one time there were a few who joined to write posts to get Goans go at each other's throats, for the fun of it. These individuals are easy to spot. After they introduced the topic / thread, they quietly slip into the background, not to be heard off again. This while others were into name / label calling, on an irrelevant topic or one that long since migrated off the subject. I suspect the religion thread is one of these. Recently, I notice a few posts are to show the poster is alive.:=)) While other posts are just to keep an irrelevant topic alive. Their posts come only when the thread is dying. Here, they ask "important" questions ... at the tail end of the discussion. Yet most Goanetters - specially the active participants - join to keep their wits and their brains sharp. Some display and utilize their vast repertoire of knowledge. Their contributions are helpful to those, like me, who may have only a remote interest in the subject. I am amazed at the seasoned / retired Goans with their sharp memory. They recall many posts from the remote past (and good for them). Goanet may be their morning mental exercise routine - preventing the onset of Alzheimer's. But, then there are a few posters who forget what they wrote just a few days or weeks prior. Chuch-churee saiba! And then there are the "yetha or vetha ree", the oxymoron, the pleonasm (redundant expressions) and the demagoguery posts. So goanet is an e-magazine or like a newspaper. For some a few articles are educational. Others use it to be entertained. Yet others may look on it as part of their morning routine - if you know what I mean. Others use the Goanet, to tell their friends they are alive. Thus part of one's routine is to check, if their friend's (or adversaries) posts have appeared. Now there may be even a few, who use it to check if they themselves are alive. As we say in America, "I know I am alive, when I get up every morning, see the paper and check my name is NOT in the obituary section." Using the delete button is OK too, like flipping through the magazine or paper. It would be abnormal if one did not use it. I go straight for the delete button on 80% of the posts. Yet, on a few, if one does not hear one self laughing, one may need to check the pulse. That's better and cheaper than going to the doctor to see if one is breathing.:=)) I agree with you and others that Goanet is a bulletin board about Goa and Goans and not about Religion. I wrote so to a couple of posters to no avail. Yet, your complain, about keeping threads about Goa alive on goanet, really relates to native Goans. They are more familiar with and impacted by ground-realities, rather than some easy-chair Goan in the west sipping on his / her mojito in between flying off on the computer keyboard. Kind Regards, GL --------------- Reena Martins I fully agree with you on the fact that this whole religion bit on Goanet is, indeed, getting pretty sickening.. to put it mildly. I've even beginning to wonder whether it was the sole objective behind starting Goanet. Maybe its time our 'intellectual' companions sought a separate forum to settle scores and show one upmanship on topics related to Hitler (RIP) and the 'rock solid moral code'- with or without God (poor guy must be going red in the face reading these posts!). Would really give the rest of us a well deserved break. _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
