From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Re: Soc.Motss.*
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 18:33:04 GMT


In article <1gjia1INN4a4@mizar.usc.edu>
adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (Arne Adolphson) writes:

>In article <1992Dec15.012442.27914@macc.wisc.edu> 
>anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:

>>[ ... ]  I propose a four-group division:

>>soc.motss.coping

>>The coming-out stories, dealing with parents, dealing
>>with other individuals who have important roles in our
>>lives, including us ourselves.

>I'm not crazy about the word "coping", but that's really a
>minor issue.  A venue where such stories are not swamped by
>all sorts of other things, where people can express
>themselves clumsily without unwittingly setting off a
>flamewar, is needed.  By all means.

I'm not irrevocably wedded to the word "coping." But I
thinking "comingout" has defects of its own and isn't
inclusive enough for the fare I was thinking of.  "Stories"
would suggest fiction, which wasn't the point either.


>>soc.motss.politics
>>soc.motss.politics.documents

>I don't see the need for this division.  Besides, I think it
>would be impossible to keep them separate in practice and I
>would imagine that articles would inevitably be
>cross-posted.  

I think there is high utility to this division; it
corresponds to the difference between primary and secondary
documentation for scholars.  It seems to me it should not be
hard to avoid cross-posting; the primary/secondary document
distinction is always obvious.

You raise an allied point:

>If I were to receive a particularly insidious
>solicitation letter and I wanted to type portions of the
>letter, my thoughts about it, and my reply to the group that
>solicited a donation, where would I post that?  Would I post
>the letter and my reply in politics.documents, and conduct
>my discussion about it (with pointers to .documents) in
>.politics?

It would be a judgment call, I guess, whether you would cite
a portion of the letter, together with your comments
(presumably derisive) and post it as one piece in *politics.
That would seem to me the normal option.  I wasn't
envisioning that the *documents group would get just any old
letter, but rather the kinds of things Ron Buckmire has been
archiving in the QRD.

Where greater care and concern *would* be required, you're
quite right, is in commenting on some document without
endlessly quoting from it.  What I think would likely be the
case is that people would refer to the document in terms of
its overall substance, not bothering with obvious snorts of
derision on every inviting word of the document text.

Part of the whole thrust of this division is to try to raise
the level of the discourse one notch.  It's not that the
regular hurly-burly of a good political fight would not
happen in the upper group, it's that where an appeal to
*fact* was involved, the documentary fact would be close at
hand.

>> soc.motss.misc

>No problem with this.

>>By myself, I could do
>>nothing to change that, but if enough people were to make an
>>effort, it could be better for all or nearly all.

>I'm certainly willing to make that effort.

Thank you.  May many others join us in this.

-- 
[Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
[Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
[Room 3130 <> 1210 West Dayton Street / Madison WI 53706 <> Phone 608/262-5888]
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Newsgroups: soc.motss