From: gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo)
Subject: Re: OOBE discussion group name
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 19:39:37 GMT

In <2116@tymix.Tymnet.COM> jdresser@hobbes.Tymnet.COM (Jay Dresser) writes:

> I think alt.oobe is the perfect name, now let's get on with the
> discussion.

Well, as the person who created the alt.oobe newsgroup originally, I've
come to feel that the points that have been brought up about the name
not being very easy to relate to for people who have not heard of it
before have good enough arguments that it's a good idea for us to think
of a different name for the newsgroup.  It's fine for those of us here
and now who have mostly come from the alt.dreams community, but if we
want to attract others from elsewhere, including those who just stumble
upon it, we should probably invest more significance in the name.

I do agree with whoever recently made the point about out-of-body
experiences being a phenomenon separate from dreaming, hence the news-
group should not be under alt.dreams.  I'm a little less sure if the
argument applies to its being a paranormal phenomenon or not, at least
in the way that term is usually used.  (The question for me is does it
deserve to be associated with the subject matter of the alt.paranormal
newsgroup, which includes a real smorgasbord of topics, including UFOs,
crop circles, cases of "possession," spiritualism, and a lot of things
which would seem to taint an objective investigation of the phenomenon
of having one's consciousness temporarily out of one's body (if that's
what it is - or is it ever there in the first place, one might ask :-).

So now I'm leaning toward simply "alt.out-of-body," even though, as was
recently pointed out, it does invite the creation of "alt.out-of-mind,"
and though it is a bit more to type, and it does get truncated to "alt.
out-of-bod" on systems running the notesfiles software (yes, it really
does, despite what people have written me and posted about the 14-char-
acter limitation being *per component* - that's true only for Usenet
news, NOT for notesfiles, which is a whole different piece of software).

Please note that at least one site (University of Kentucky, Department
of Math Sciences) has refused to carry "alt.oobe," on the grounds that
the name is not sufficiently descriptive.  I suspect others may follow.
But even if we did get a sufficient number carrying it to make it semi-
viable, I think it would be difficult to attract new people, and those
of us who are from the alt.dreams community would keep having to steer
people over to alt.oobe, since they wouldn't otherwise know about it.
Yes, we could put mention into a FAQ file, but we might as well make
the name descriptive enough and attractive enough the first time around.

I hope we can resolve this issue within a couple of weeks.  I propose
we discuss the subject for another week (until 31 July), and then have
an informal vote.  I'll collect votes when it comes time, unless some-
one else would like to volunteer (don't send any votes yet - wait until
after the discussion period).  If someone wants to handle the voting,
just post a followup to this article saying so.

Once we all agree on a name, I'll send out a control message to destroy
alt.oobe.  Yes, it might be hard to get rid of, as someone pointed out,
but we'll do our best (except in what I imagine to be the unlikely event
that that name wins the vote - which, at this point I hope it doesn't,
despite my having created it in the first place).

More comments?
--
    Gary S. Trujillo                            gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts              {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst