From: Richard Kerr <>
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian
Subject: Re: My Reply
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 17:11:43 +1000

 wrote:
> 
> Andrew Bromage wrote:
[snip]
> > Whilst we welcome contributions from anyone anywhere in the world, this
> > group caters specifically for Australian-related religious matters.
> 
> I'm glad you said Australian-related religious matters.  For, Australian-
> related Christian matters in the exclusive sense would be a betrayal of
> Christian principles i.e. the God's church is catholic, holy......
> I was misled by   the group's name - aus.religion.christian.  And I
> can't see how virgin birth, christian thinking related to evolution
> etc is specifically Australian.  Perhaps you might consider a name change
> for your newsgroup.

To what?

aus.religion, and later aus.religion.christian, started when it became
obvious that Australians needed a place where we could talk about issues
that particularly concern us without being deluged by the flood of posts
generated by the rest of the world. The "aus" part of the newsgroup's
name means "of particular relevance to Australia".

Believe it or not, delite, Australia has a distinct culture. We share a
language, but I can tell you after living in your domain for a year that
Canadians, on the whole, see the world differently to Australians, on
the whole.

It's not that we don't welcome you to the newsgroup, it's that we would
like you to respect us enough to talk to us about the things that
concern _us_ particularly when you come to newsgroups that we set up in
our own domain for the express purpose of disecting religion in our own
culture. We're interested in Australia _in_particular_. If you, or
anyone wants to talk about religion in Australia _in_particular_ you are
welcome to come and talk with us.

> Perhaps there is a Austalian Christian NG that is open to outside input.

We are, if it is sensitive to the purpose of the newsgroup. Your next
paragraph illustrates you misunderstanding:

> I mean in the line of alt.Christnet which has lots of American input but
> is open to the whole world and where posts from Australian Christians is often
> see.

alt.Christnet is part of a global domain. If you have a message that is
relevant for the whole world it belongs there. General messages go in
general newsgroups and Australian (and Americans, and Venezualans) with
general interests will go there and read them.

Specificaly Australian messages go into specificaly Australian
newsgroups and Australians (and Ammericans, and Venezualans) with
general interests will go there and read them.

See how it works?

-- 
Richard Kerr               Phone: (02) 9351 2779
SUHRF 2000 Project           Fax: (02) 9351 7393
University of Sydney