From: stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RF(Informal)D: Standard RFD/CFV Format
Keywords: RFD CFV formats guidelines votes
Date: 20 Nov 92 06:32:13 GMT
Article-I.D.: talon.1ei0pdINNg3n
Organization: Oregon State University, College of Oceanography
NNTP-Posting-Host: skyking.oce.orst.edu

In article <1992Nov18.163820.25686@watson.ibm.com> strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom) writes:
>In article <1ec6spINNn0q@talon.UCS.ORST.EDU>, stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley) writes:
>|> or what they are told. You can write flawless prose to describe the

>I can't accept your characterization of the guidelines as "flawless prose".

That's nice, because I didn't characterize them as such. I said "you
can write", not "someone did write". The former implies the
possibility, the shoots the value of that possibility down by noting
that you still won't get everyone to understand what was written.

>It is very unclear on the issue of what is required vs. what is
>merely recommended.  Here are the guidelines with respect to Subject lines:
>
>			   Use Descriptive Titles

This text is not in the guidelines for group creation. It may be in the
'netiquette' postings, but those are not guidelines for group creation.

>a reader
>is not expected to read a CFV to find out what it's about.

He does not have to. It is a call for votes. The subject says so. If you
aren't interested in the process, don't read it. If you are, read it.
Don't decide you aren't interested today, and then complain because the
result didn't come out like you wanted.

>Now after reading the post-mortem of the rms vote, the net-consensus
>seems to be that despite the above, the current process expects
>that a CFV appearing in your newsgroup should be read regardless
>of what the title says, as long as it says "CFV".  

It doesn't take too much effort to connect the ideas that "newsgroups
are formed to carry traffic relevant to the newsgroup" and "a posting
in a newsgroup is most likely relevant to the newsgroup."

>Furthermore
>Mr. Stanley believes that this fact is well-documented.

Don't you dare decide for me what I believe or not. I have never said
it is well documented, nor have I implied that. I have also never
claimed that it needed to be well documented. There are things that
don't need a whole lot of documentation for them to be important to
know. Where is the documentation that says that cutting your hand off
may cause you to bleed to death? Why should ladder companies have to
tell people if they stand on the top step that they might fall off?

>OK.  I accept that I read things one way and the net seems
>to have interpreted it another way.  

It takes very little interpretation to see that the guidelines that
cover newsgroup creation say nothing about what the Subject: line will
look like. Those are the guidelines you claimed to have read.

>Well now I do understand the process, at least better than I did.
>I still think (1) it wasn't well documented, 

What process are you referring to? How to vote? That was extremely well
documented. How to create a new group? You weren't trying to create one,
were you? 

>and (2) even if it
>were perfectly documented, it's not as good a process as the
>modified one which I proposed.

I disagree.
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