> Who can tell me...what is the newsgroup "alt.gathering" there for?
> I've never found a real message in it (except my own queries, which
> never get answered), and rarely find any spam there.
No real messages ? Are you sure your news feed isn't broken ? I see around
3-50 messages a day, lately.
> Since all of the people seem to be here (due to association with
> "Rainbow", I assume), why was alt.gathering created in the first
> place?
The original idea was to also create alt.gathering.ef
alt.gathering.pagan, etc... but "rainbow" has stayed the only group in
this hierarchy.
I created alt.gathering.rainbow cause I felt that we needed a place to
connect with other Rainbows. I had seen how an electronically based community
sprung out of rec.music.gdead, and I wanted something similar for Rainbow.
At the same time, there was a discussion group on PeaceNet called
awf.rainbownews that had a few folks using it. So we convinced PeaceNet
that cause it was Rainbow, it had to be free. (they charge $2). So AGR
was created as the "free" version of awf.rainbownews.
> Were they both created by the same people (this is the only
> other newsgroup in the hierarchy)?
Yes, I created both alt.gathering and alt.gathering.rainbow at the same time.
(I also created alt.hemp that same day)
> How old are they, and does anyone ever post the charters?
The PeaceNet group started in 1987. AGR was created in 1992, and at the
same time we implemnted the original email gateway. Finally in 1995 PeaceNet
couldn't maintain the busy and growing list, so they asked us to move it. At
that time, I then moved the list and gateways to my mail server, where it's been
since. (and survived 3 hardware upgrades)
Someplace I have the original Charter, I've never reposted it since the
net.gods let me create AGR. I'll go look for it, I have it around here
someplace.
Just as a note, I have *every* message posted to AGR since 1987 on the
www.welcomehome.org web site. It's under the "General Info" link, look
down near the bottom. The search engine on the Rainbow site is local, so
you can use it to search the archives that way, or by date. There's alot of
good stuff buried deep in there...
- rob -