From: gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo)
Newsgroups: news.groups,alt.native
Subject: soc.culture.<whatever>.*
Date: 16 Dec 92 20:20:12 GMT
Article-I.D.: gnosys.1992Dec16.202012.9338

In article <BzC96H.K4x@news.cso.uiuc.edu> StarOwl@uiuc.edu writes:

> floyd@hayes.ims.alaska.edu (Floyd Davidson) writes:
>
> >Mike seems opposed to discussing as part of the vote that choosing a
> >name also somewhat restricts the charter.  I would like to see a
> >division that can accommodate most of all the NativeNet gateway, which
> >means it would be best to split into two groups, one for discussion
> >and one for informational posts.  s.c.*.d and s.c.*.misc seem to be
> >the best choices?
>
> Let's try to get one group up and running, then check and see how the
> posts are distributed along general topic lines, before we start splitting
> into subgroups, please.

The procedure of creating a generic newsgroup and then letting it become
divided into a number of subgroups over time seems a good policy in the
general case, but I feel this is not the general case.  Usually, when a
new newsgroup is created, discussion begins at that point, and a community
of interest develops around the newsgroup.  The natural divisions become
clear over time...

In this case, however, we already have a very substantial community in
existence in the NativeNet mailing lists to which Floyd refers above.
These mailing lists have arisen from a process similar to that which
normally occurs in the case of Usenet newsgroups.  Since it is natural
to conjoin those mailing lists with the new Usenet newsgroups under
soc.culture.{native,indigenous,aboriginal} (take your pick), so as to
avoid piecemeal copying from the mailing lists to Usenet and vice-versa,
as often happens in such cases where there is no formal gateway relation-
ship between the two, I feel we have a very different case from the usual
one here.  [ Those who are regular readers of news.groups will recognize
a similar situation in the case of those who are currently in the process
of building a consensus for the creation of a newsgroup to talk about the
Baltic republics of eastern Europe; the natural suggestion has been made
that that new newsgroup be linked with the already-existing Bitnet-based
BALT-L list, which has been in existence for at least a couple of years.
The difference in that case is that BALT-L is a single list.  However, if
there had been separate lists for the republics of Lithuania, Latvia and
Estonia, which comprise those republics, we would have a directly parallel
case, and it would have seemed natural to create a set of new newsgroups,
like "soc.culture.baltic.{lithuania,latvia,estonia}" to accomodate the
discourse about those three newly-liberated countries, to parallel the
Bitnet-based lists. ]

Those of us who have been using Usenet for a while will recognize that we
no longer live in an "island paradise" :-) kind of situation, wherein we
can ignore what is happening in the wider net-world, and consider ourselves
to be separate from it without sacrificing something which I, for one, feel
to be critically important, particularly in cases where we are discussing
cultures.  The great potential of computer networking, in my view, lies in
its international reach, in its ability to create bonds of friendship and
understanding among many diverse people and peoples.  We have seen the
creation of Usenet hierarchies (unfortunately not carried by all hosts, and
I don't even know what proportion do), such as "bit.listserv.*," which are
in existence to carry existing Bitnet-based lists.  If it weren't for the
fact that many hosts do not carry bit.listserv.*, that hierarchy would
probably be ideal for the purpose.

Now we have a proposal before us that we create a new vehicle for promoting
the exchange of ideas and information about Native/Indigenous/Aboriginal
people and their peoples (societies) around the world.  I am grateful to
Mike Wilson for having begun this initiative, and look forward to working
closely with him to establish and promote this new Usenet entity which I
agree is long overdue.  However, I do not want it to be created in such a
way that it ignores the fact of there being an already-established commun-
ity of people who have been carrying on this kind of dialogue for the past
three years (since September, 1989), and whose discussion has branched out
into the following lists:

        NATIVE-L        general exchange of information
        NATCHAT         dialogue about indigenous peoples
        NAT-1492        Columbus quincentenary forum
        NAT-EDU         educational issues of indigenous peoples
        nn.lang         indigenous peoples' languages (not Bitnet-based)

Since there is light traffic on the last three lists mentioned, I don't
think there is any point in creating Usenet subgroups to accomodate them
at the present time, but there is a great deal of traffic in both NATIVE-L
and NATCHAT, so it *does* seem appropriate to construct a Usenet counter-
part to each of these lists, in order that it is easily-possible to create
a gateway relationship between the mailing list / newsgroup pairs.  My
suggestion would be something like:

	NATIVE-L	soc.culture.<whatever>
		    or	soc.culture.<whatever>.misc   (Floyd's suggestion)
and
	NATCHAT		soc.culture.<whatever>.d

(where <whatever> is one of "native," "indigenous," or "aboriginal").

Later, if it is decided to create a separate newsgroup to handle traffic
on the indigenous peoples of the Americas, we could create a newsgroup
called something like "soc.culture.<whatever>.american" and possibly a
"soc.culture.<whatever>.american.d" and to link them with new mailing
lists for those poor benighted souls in Bitnet-land and on systems which
do not have access to Usenet.

As to the issue of naming, someone recently objected to the idea of
having a "soc.culture.<whatever>.d," I think.  I've looked through the
list of mainstream newsgroups, and have come up with several instances
of ".d" newsgroups attached to a parent newsgroup that itself carries
traffic (as opposed to using that parent newsgroup solely as a node for
associating a number of subgroups).  Those newsgroups are:

	comp.binaries.ibm.pc
	comp.sys.hp48
	misc.forsale.computers
  and	rec.humor

and yes, there are some newsgroups which do not use the parent for dis-
cussion:

	comp.archives.msdos
	comp.networks.noctools
	comp.sources

But they're running neck-in-neck in number with the others.  Perhaps some
net-historian can explain whether there is a trend away from the former
situation, since otherwise, I don't see a clear reason for avoiding doing
things that way, to create, for example:

	soc.culture.indigenous
  and	soc.culture.indigenous.d

If someone objects to eventually having, in addition:

	soc.culture.indigenous.american
  and	soc.culture.indigenous.american.d

please note that there is precedent for such a thing in:

	rec.humor
     *	rec.humor.d
	rec.humor.flame
	rec.humor.funny
	rec.humor.oracle
     *	rec.humor.oracle.d

(Maybe this arrangement is itself supposed to be a joke. :-)

In any event, I'll conclude by saying that I feel there is good reason
to press for the creation of two newsgroups initially, to separate dis-
cussion from information, for reasons given by Floyd, but, unlike him,
I would prefer to avoid a ".misc" newsgroup by using the parent news-
group for informational postings.  However I would accept the ".misc"
if that were the will of the voting net-public.

Sincere regards,

Gary
--
    Gary S. Trujillo                            gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts              {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst
Newsgroups: news.groups