From: kornai@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Andras Kornai)
Subject: Grand Unification (Was: is there more soc.culture.magyar?)
Organization: Stanford University CSLI
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 08:08:51 GMT

In <1992Apr2.161836.28239@walter.bellcore.com> attila@breeze.bellcore.com writes:

>As some readers may recall, I made this proposal [to make s.c.m the 
center of activity] several times already.
>Quite a few readers were in favour, and some even manually crossposted
>longer articles to s.c.m.  However, the most vocal opponents were the
>system administrators of the list-serv groups.

Were they really? I understand Zoli Fekete already crossposts s.c.m to
AGORA and also has plans to gateway in the other direction. Anyway if
you think your proposal is mature enough, go ahead and start a
discussion on the lists -- you will be surprised how easy it is to get
a good discussion going on these "closed" mailing lists.  It is also
easy to put matters to vote both on HIX and ZFIX: if you think your
proposal is *that* mature just do it.

>And, yes, I would be willing to put in some work, or donate cpu cycles, 
>or storage, whatever.  

Great! Step one of the Grand Unification should be to synchronize Eric
Dahlin's HUNGARY with s.c.m, as these two have nearly identical
charters.  If you really have storage available, talk to Jo1zsi
Hollo1si -- I understand HIX is pretty low on space. This could be
step two of the GU.

>About your 3 points:
>> 1. How to include sites without usenet access?
>Use the existing list-servs and gateway both directions.

I think you seriously underestimate the techical difficulties, such as
the Bitnet vs. Internet backbone, the mainframe vs. workstation core
machines, the CMS/VMS/MVS vs. Unix core operating systems, the
centralized vs.  distributed communication models that gave rise to
the listserv vs. usenet approaches in the first place. To harmonize
these two is perhaps the biggest challange for mail hackers today: if
you can do it *well* you will be a net.hero. I think both Hollo1si and
Fekete made significant techical contributions (Jo1zsi with the clever
packaging to reduce outgoing volume, and Zoli with creating the 
centralized equivalent of the kill-file mechanism) but a great 
deal remains to be done. 

>> 2. What to do with the large volume of postings in Hungarian?
>> 
>Is this a PROBLEM???

I don't really know: the way to find out is by getting a discussion
going BOTH on the primarily Hungarian lists and on the primarily
English ones. Some netters like postings in Hungarian, others don't.
I, for one, hate the native language postings on the *other* s.c
groups but of course Hungarian is different:-) Just don't be surprised
if you attempt GU but end up with a split between soc.culture.magyar
and soc.culture.hungarian.

>> 3. How to preserve the daily rhythm of postings? 
>The daily rhythm seemed like a bug to me, but I guess it could be a
>feature.  Well, you got me here.
One person's bug is the other person's feature. I don't want to start
a religious war over this one, especially as I have my own private
crusade, the use of accents, which I find far more important. 

>Unrhythmically yours,
>Leslie A. Walko

Yours accented,
Andra1s Kornai