From: strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom)
Subject: Re: *BAD* music group reorg will not be honored
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 92 05:42:14 GMT
Organization: IBM Research

In article <7744@lib.tmc.edu>, jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:
|> In article <1dcc64INNeo5@agate.berkeley.edu> shirriff@sprite.berkeley.edu (Ken Shirriff) writes:
|> >That is just plain incorrect.  According to the guidelines:
|> >    "A request for discussion on creation of a new newsgroup should be posted
|> >    to news.announce.newgroups, and also to any other groups or mailing lists
|> >    at all related to the proposed topic if desired.  [... Then] a call for
|> >    votes may be posted to news.announce.newgroups and any other groups or
|> >    mailing lists that the original request for discussion might have been
|> >    posted to."
|> >It is clear from the guidelines that the CFV can go to any group at all
|> >related to the proposed topic, and not just groups affected by the vote.
|> 
|> You're right; I apologize. That said, the volume of cross-posting from
|> news.groups, and certainly from news.announce.newgroups, is small enough that
|> it's not unreasonable to expect folks who care about uch things to read the
|> messages when they appear in a given group. There was plenty of notice given;
|> those who did not take notice and participate in the process - which is kept
|> scrupulously open, for this exact reason - are accepting whatever those who
|> choose to participate decide.
|> -- 

I don't have a strong opinion about what should be done about this case.
But I do think that there is a hidden "gotcha".  I have been reading
and posting to the net for over a year, and have been involved in
several votes regarding newsgroups, and have even been involved in
creation of a newsgroup (comp.lang.hermes), and I was fooled.

Whether I was at fault or not for being fooled, I can't say.

There is a lot of traffic on rec.music.synth.  I only read a
tiny fraction of it, and skip the rest.  I display the
Subject lines to decide what to read (xrn).  I don't remember
seeing the CFV, so presumably I just passed right over
a subject line which said CFV:  rec.music.makers.*, assuming
that it had to do with some irrelevant cousin groups which I don't
read.  It's likely that those who would have voted NO because
they didn't think rec.music.synth was related to rec.music.makers
would have been more apt to pass over that subject line.  So
it could be that more potential NO voters than YES voters
fell into the trap.

How to remedy the problem in the future?  Either:
(1) Require that a CFV affecting a group have that group
    name explicitly in the subject.
or
(2) Warn all new users that they should read all CFV:
    e.g. if in sci.physics you see a CFV for sci.philosophy.*,
    you'd better read it because it might include a proposal
    to rename sci.physics to sci.philosophy.natural,
    and if it passes without your vote it's too bad.

I personally prefer (1) over (2).  I'll leave it to
others to decide whether enough harm was done 
in this case to retroactively apply (1) to the
rec.music.synth renaming vote.  

I'll somehow find the group and subscribe to it
no matter how it's named.

-- 
Rob Strom, strom@watson.ibm.com, (914) 784-7641
IBM Research, 30 Saw Mill River Road, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY  10598