From: rdd@rascal.ics.utexas.edu (Robert Dorsett)
Subject: RFD: sci.aeronautics.airliners
Followup-To: news.groups
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 23:42:42 GMT

             REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION: SCI.AERONAUTICS.AIRLINERS

PROPOSED CHARTER:

    Moderated-discussion group on airliner technology, concentrating on
    the design, construction, performance, human factors, operation, and
    histories of transport-category aircraft.


DISCUSSION PERIOD:

    0000 CST August 19, 1992 through 0000 CST September 18, 1992.

    Following the discussion period, if there appears to be support,
    I will issue a CALL-FOR-VOTES (CFV).  
    
    This RFD will be re-posted in two weeks.

    Please wade through the following to answer the mini-survey at
    the end.


WHY?

A month ago, Geoff Peck issued a comprehensive re-organization proposal for 
rec.aviation, after somewhat intense consultation with quite a few people, 
including myself.  Simultaneously, I ran a survey on a variety of proposed 
newsgroups, to try to get a "straw poll" of how strongly users might 
support the various groups (and the re-organization concept, in general).

The discussion-period showed there was fairly widespread interest in an
airliners newsgroup.  Even though, on average, airliner traffic comprises 
about 7% of the total traffic on rec.aviation, over a quarter of the survey
respondents expressed a strong interest in the creation of an airliners 
group.

Currently, airliner traffic is distributed among rec.travel.air, 
sci.aeronautics, comp.risks, and rec.aviation, in declining order of 
frequency.  Some consolidation of this type of traffic is clearly needed.


Going into the discussion period, I believed that the user-base for an 
airliners group was too tenuous for it to work.  I have changed that 
opinion.  However, the question of which forum is more appropriate for
an airliner sub-group lingers: sci.aeronautics, or rec.aviation.  I feel 
the correct choice is sci.aeronautics, for the following reasons:

    1.  The "technical" aspects of the proposed charter clearly match the
    charter of sci.aeronautics; it would be a "case-study" group.  When
    sci.aeronautics was created, "aeronautics" was very carefully chosen
    as its name, to give the charter more breadth than "aerodynamics" or 
    other similar "specialty" terms would imply.  It was intended to deal 
    with the *technology* of aerospace, in both theoretical and practical
    applications.

    2.  Sci.aeronautics reaches more technical sites than rec.aviation,
    Of particular concern is the fact that many aerospace companies simply 
    do not import rec.*.  This means that by including an airliner group in 
    rec.*, we would automatically be excluding many of the people the group 
    needs the most, in order to work.

    3.  In a similar vein, many educational sites do not receive rec.*.
    Especially with an increasing number of high schools developing their
    own sub-nets, experimenting with the use of usenet in a teaching
    environment, creating a useful, low-noise group under the sci.*
    hierarchy could have far-reaching ramifications.
    
    4.  Rec.aviation's forte has always been *general* aviation: that's
    what the group's for, and that's why it's in the rec.* hierarchy.
    Rec.aviation has been characterized by technical, specialized traffic,
    *but* the orientation strongly remains *general* aviation (general 
    aviation is the FAA's designation for non-commercial, non-military 
    aviation).  General aviation is what the rec.aviation users *do*, 
    what they *fly*, what they *know* about.  It is a group that any 
    conscientious private pilot should read.
    
    However, specialized, technical discussions, outside the scope of 
    "classical" general aviation, have tended to be relatively low-signal, 
    intermittent, and somewhat repetitious.  These discussions do not 
    necessarily belong in rec.aviation, any more than discussions on, say, 
    ticket-prices do.  When alternative forums exist for this "specialist"
    traffic, they should be utilized, and this is the case with 
    sci.aeronautics.
    
    5.  For the many people not interested in "flying," per se, but only
    *technology*, sci.aeronautics is the logical place to look for
    technical  discussions of this type.

    6.  "Sci," in general, is supposed to get people to think more clearly
    about subjects, before they post.  This is obviously not always the
    case (and I'm *occasionally* an offender :-)), but the idea's there.


I propose that sci.aeronautics.airliners be created as a *moderated* group.
Why?  Simply because these discussions sometimes create a *lot* of
noise.  For example, some twenty non-informative posts resulted from the 
crash of a USAir jetliner earlier this year; over half of them were "what do 
you think happened?" queries, within a day of the crash.  Earlier, over *50*
posts were dedicated to the "Fat Guy on Southwest" thread, about an
overweight passenger getting bumped.  And 28 posts resulted from one
person asking for help identifying an unknown tail logo he saw at an
airport--all replying with much the same information.  

I have nothing against the people who ask and answer these questions: it's 
just not a very useful utilization of resources, overall, and is, occasion-
ally, an *abysmal* utilization of resources.  Thus, moderation of some kind 
is called for, if not to guide the *qualitative* traffic, then to at least 
cut down on the *repetition*.

I would love to do it: however, inasmuch as I tend to step on too many
toes (:-)), I propose Karl Swartz.  Karl has contributed a large number of
highly informative discussions to the various airliners groups over
the years.  He's literate, well-informed, level-headed, and can be
trusted to do a good job.  He's interested in both "technical" issues, and
more "enthusiast-ish" issues, which would tend to ensure a fair balance of
posts.  He's indicated that he would use a very flexible moderation style, 
essentially reposting all messages until a "noise threshold" is reached.  
He's also expressed interest in the "co-moderation" concept, so as to keep 
the group alive, if any single moderator should go off on vacation or be 
indisposed; this can also be used for "load-shedding" if it should evolve 
into a high-volume group.


"What about the rec.aviation re-organization?" you might ask.  

Geoff's proposal is about to go to a formal vote.  Well, the bottom line is: 
he has an alternate take on this.  He feels that an airliner group in 
rec.aviation could work, and it will appear on his CFV.  I respectfully 
disagree with his decision to include it, but wish him the best of luck with 
most of the remainder of his proposal.  

The reason I'm posting this RFD at this late point is that I don't feel the
issue has been sufficiently discussed, nor that the interests of "non-
rec.aviation" viewpoints on the net have been sufficiently considered. 


To make a long story short, I've been pushing for an airliners group
since 1985.  I still have misgivings as to whether one would work,
but if we're going to establish the framework, I think it should be one
that will produce the "best," most technical, low-noise discussions, one
which will clearly delineate engineering/human factors/operations 
discussions, and one which will be flexible enough to let us grow into, as 
more and more aerospace personnel join the net, and the character of the 
traffic changes from speculative/academic, to applications-oriented.

I feel that sci.aeronautics.airliners is the only logical choice, while
a *rec* group is a big step in the wrong direction, and an unmoderated rec
group even worse.


Since the rec.aviation re-organization discussion period failed to address
this issue clearly (one among a dozen and a half proposed groups), I'm 
hoping this RFD will, and will influence the vote in favor of an eventual 
CFV for the sci.aeronautics.airliners group, AND incline users to vote 
against the rec.aviation.airliners group, in the short term.  

Therefore, to kick off THIS discussion period, I ask you to answer the
following four questions:

    1. Do you support an airliners group at ALL?

    2. Do you feel it should be under sci.aeronautics?

    3. Do you feel it should be under rec.aviation?

    4. Do you feel that an airliners group should be moderated?

Just reply to this message, or send email to 
airliner-survey@rascal.ics.utexas.edu.  Any additional commentary is, as 
always, most welcome.

As with the rec.aviation survey, this set of questions is non-binding:
it's solely to help me take a straw poll of the relative support of the
two proposals.  You will have an opportunity to issue a formal vote
for or against the group if this proposal goes to a call-for-votes in
four weeks' time.

Please direct all follow-ups to news.groups.
-- 
Robert Dorsett
rdd@cactus.org
...cs.utexas.edu!cactus.org!rdd
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.sys.apple2,comp.binaries.apple2