HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: news@wolves.uucp (The Wolfe of the Den)
Newsgroups: news.groups,alt.usenet.culture
Subject: Re: CFV? What's a CFV??
Date: 16 Nov 92 04:22:36 GMT
Reply-To: news@wolves.durham.nc.us
Organization: Wolves Den UNIX
X-Md4-Signature: 90bf8d82aee41769a2cba1c501e843b9

In <1992Nov13.205220.19709@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov writes:
>rsk@gynko.circ.upenn.edu (Rich Kulawiec) writes:
>
>>After over a decade of Usenet, I think it's become clear that there are
>>large numbers of people who will not pay attention to important information,
>>no matter how much effort is put into trying to get it into their hands.
>
>By who's standards is this stuff "Important"? Are you implying that 
>everyone's standards of importance are the same?

There is, in any social organization, sets of information that are
acquired by learning.  These include the language, the idioms, the rules
(formal and informal), the ethics, the aesthetics, etc.  In short, the
*culture* of that social organization.

The concept of net.culture is only recently getting attention.  It seems
clear, though, that the culture of the net is extremely diverse and not
yet settled.  I'll suggest that perhaps it is so murky because there is
no clear educational structure to teach people entering it the culture
in a timely fashion.  I suspect that the length of time necessary to
gain an "adequate" understanding of net.culture is on the order of 1
year!  In the interim period, the user will apply the rules and tactics
of their native culture to the net, with the concommitant confusion and
misunderstanding that will result.  (Usenet administrators are just as
subject to this problem as the readers are.)

A further complication is that quite a few folks are not exposed to
enough different groups (due to selective reading or limitations in
their newsfeeds) to provide any clues to the more general culture of the
net (as opposed to the specific "sub-cultures" of the various newsgroup
polities.)

Heck, some folks don't fully grasp net.culture in *years* of reading
news.  (Net.culture can change pretty rapidly too!)

What is needed is some way to encourage the admins of the net to provide
a set of introductory documents to new users (all new users) and to have
some restriction on posting until the user shows some understanding of
the net.culture (or at least some basic nettiquette. :-)

Comments?
-- 
Usenet Net News Administrator @ The Wolves Den  (G. Wolfe Woodbury)
news@wolves.durham.nc.us  news%wolves@cs.duke.edu  ...duke!wolves!news
"The flame war is a specific Usenet art form." --me
[This site is not affiliated with Duke University. (Idiots!) ]
Newsgroups: news.groups,misc.jobs.misc
From: igj@leland.Stanford.EDU (Ian Glen Jacobs)
Subject: RFD- misc.jobs.non-computer
Keywords: New jobs newsgroup?
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 20:30:15 GMT



=>I think there should be a group (I know it would have light traffic)
=>called something like misc.jobs.offered.noncomputer.
=>
=>There are so few non-computer jobs listed that this new group would make
=>it easier for non-computer job searchers to find what they are looking
=>for. It might also increase the frequency of such posts...
=>
=>
=>any responses




-I-
igj@leland.stanford.edu


ps- since I have first posted this I have recieved about ten messages... 9 in favor and one strongly pooh-poohing me, saying that I should use the "proper" arena for a job search.
From: rsk@aspen.circ.upenn.edu (Rich Kulawiec)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Short comments, plus long rec.music.makers.* pre-vote discussion
Keywords: music, makers, synth, flame war, vote, rfd, cfv
Date: 20 Nov 92 03:41:10 GMT
Organization: GSP Whitewater Slalom Racing Team

In article <1992Nov20.014227.9059@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov writes:
>I still don't think they had a full and fair chance to participate. Not
>when 14 users say "I didn't know about it". The goal here is ZERO.

Your goal, perhaps.  It's certainly not one of mine, because I consider it
completely unrealistic(*), and because I have better things to do than waste
my time trying to inform people who do not want to be informed, or who
have not taken rudimentary steps to inform themselves, or both.  Of course,
this same attitude might also explain why I no longer read manual excerpts
to users, answer elementary questions covered by "README" files, or spend
a lot of time answering inquiries that have been asked on Usenet for the
47th time *and* are covered by a FAQ.  I think people should be responsible
for educating themselves, especially when resources are easily available.
Those who choose not to educate themelves will suffer the consequences,
unless they are very lucky.

Evolve or perish.

---Rsk

(*) Current estimates of Usenet's readership range from 10^6 to 10^7.
I leave the inherent logistical difficulties in achieving 100%
voter participation for a population of this size as an exercise
for the reader.
Xref: sparky news.groups:22174 soc.culture.indian:37297 soc.culture.pakistan:16801 soc.culture.bangladesh:6001
From: ahmed-shakil@cs.yale.edu (Shakil Waiz Ahmed)
Newsgroups: news.groups,soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.bangladesh
Subject: Re: CFV: soc.religion.islam.ahmadiyya moderated
Date: 17 Nov 1992 10:02:29 -0500
Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2158
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: curie.systemsy.cs.yale.edu


In article <1992Nov17.001351@IASTATE.EDU>, jakhan@IASTATE.EDU (Javed Ahmed Khan) writes:
> ========================
> Shakil Ahmed writes:
> 
> Actually, it *is* that simple, and you have yet to show why it isn't.
> The fact of the matter remains that the Qur'an is clear in stating
> that prophet Muhammed (pbuh) was the last prophet, that the Qur'an
> will be protected by God, and that anyone who deviates from this and
> forms their own sects is on their own and not part of Islam.  Since
> the Qur'an had been around for ages before the Ahmadiya sect was
> formed in violation of all the above conditions, it follows that
> anyone who believes completely in the Qur'an (by definition a
> condition for being a Muslim), cannot agree to the notion that
> Ahmadiyas are Muslims.
> =======================
> 
> 
> Your argument rests on the premise that since the ulema among the non-ahmadi
> muslims believe the interpretation of "Khatm-n-Nabiyeen" as the "*Last* of the
> Prophets" rather than "*Seal* of prophets", its valid to claim that the first
> interpretation is what God intended. The fact remains that the Arabic meaning of
> the word does lend itself to interpretation in both senses but has been fiercely
> rejected by these scholars. Unfortunately as is always the case we dont have
> prophet Muhammad to help us out but are stuck with a bunch of "scholars" of
> Islam to lead our way.

You refer to 33:40, I believe.  Yusuf Ali actually translates this as
"seal" with a footnote describing how the word "seal" carries with it
a final connotation in the English language.  Casting that aside,
there are other passages which clearly speak of the issue of sects
(such as 30:32, 42:13-14, 43:64-65, 45:17, 28) which one simply cannot
ignore or interpret their way around.  

-- Shakil
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: farrow@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (J. Scott Farrow)
Subject: Re: RFD: rec.games.netrek reorganization
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 16:00:37 GMT

hill@norman.VI.RI.CMU.EDU (Robert Hill) writes:

>Do you think more readers of r.g.n. would want to know about it or not?  I  
>think that a much lager subset of r.g.n. readers would like to know.   
>Besides, its not like we are talking alot of posts here.  Its just  
>pointless to sift through 100 news.groups messages everyday.

>> There is a large and boring flame war going on on this topic right 
>> now, get in on that if you think the guidelines are wrong.
>>  -Tom

>I do...but i'm unsubscribing to news.groups today.  I have no desire to  
>sit and read this stuff.

>Rob

All this discussion about whether the discussion of a split belongs here is
mystifying. Tom has pointed out that according to the Usenet guidelines, it
does belong here.

Yeah, the traffic in news.groups is high, but is that a problem. Not for me
anyway. Wading though? Get a real newsreader, like nn or tin. I get to 
news.groups, type "=", then "netrek", it selects the articles for me, I read 
the 4 or 5 a day and move on. This is not a major undertaking. 

Let's get back to talking about whether there should be a split or not.

Scott
--
************* Repeal Amendment 2! - Shame On You, Colorado. ******************
J. Scott Farrow-Student SysAdmin/Programmer, University of Colorado at Boulder
Computing & Network Services, Boulder, Colorado, USA, phone: (303) 492-4428
Internet: farrow@spot.colorado.edu, farrow@cs.colorado.edu
From: dave@frackit.UUCP (Dave Ratcliffe)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Give up, Dave, you've lost!
Date: 19 Nov 92 02:23:30 GMT
Organization: Data Factory Services, Harrisburg, Pa.


 In article <1992Nov14.012352.1362@jato.jpl.nasa.gov>, dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes) writes:
 > tomh@wes.on.ca (Tom Haapanen) writes:
 > >Give up, Dave -- even the synth readers have accepted r.m.m.s!
 > 
 > Just because they are posting to that group doesn't mean they've
 > accepted that the name change was valid...it simply means they know
 > how boneheaded you news admins are. They know that you folks would rather
 > die than give in...
 
Gee! That sounds kinda like            YOU!

Fancy that....  


-- 
 ...uunet!wa3wbu!frackit!dave -or-                       |  Dave Ratcliffe  |
 frackit!dave@uunet.UU.NET -or- dave@frackit.uucp -or-   |  Sys. <*> Admin. |
 vogon1!compnect!frackit!dave@psuvax1.psu.edu            | Harrisburg,  Pa. |
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Subject: Re: Short comments, plus long rec.music.makers.* pre-vote discussion
Organization: Elitist Usenet Administrators, Stuff & Nonsense Division
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 04:34:35 GMT

In article <15013.9211211300@csparc2.scs.leeds.ac.uk> ross-c@scs.leeds.ac.uk writes:

>In article <98467@netnews.upenn.edu> you write:
>
>>have not taken rudimentary steps to inform themselves, or both.  Of course,
>>this same attitude might also explain why I no longer read manual excerpts
>>to users, answer elementary questions covered by "README" files, or spend
>>a lot of time answering inquiries that have been asked on Usenet for the
>>47th time *and* are covered by a FAQ.  I think people should be responsible
>
>The attitude expressed by Ric K. makes me glad that I don't work at his
>site. There may be repetition in your job, but this is the fault of your
>job, not the people asking questions.

So?  That doesn't mean that he needs to hand-hold everyone and their
brother through every niggling little computer problem.  At Amherst
we've written up a considerable amount of documentation on frequently
asked questions, such as laserprinting, sending e-mail, accessing
various networked campus facilities, and so on.  Now if someone asks
one of these questions, we can simply give them a handout, rather than
spending ten minutes watching over their shoulder.

-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / 
\  / twpierce@unix.amherst.edu /               Rocks say goodbye.
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) / 
Newsgroups: news.groups,soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.bangladesh
From: gagrawal@cs.tamu.edu (Gopal Agrawal)
Subject: Re: CFV: soc.religion.islam.ahmadiyya moderated
Organization: Computer Science Department, Texas A&M University
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 06:06:18 GMT

In article <1e3uhiINNh0j@CURIE.SYSTEMSY.CS.YALE.EDU> ahmed-shakil@cs.yale.edu (Shakil Waiz Ahmed) writes:
>
>It is not merely a question of "gains."  It is also a question of
>representation, and more importantly, simple semantics.  If an
>individual makes a certain country look bad (in the eyes of the
>majority), the person is frowned upon, sometimes banished.  If Muslims
>feel that Ahmadis do not follow Islamic ideals and present a distorted
>picture of Islam if they call themselves "Muslim," it is a valid
>ground to ask them to call themselves something different.
>
>-- Shakil

So does that mean if the Ahmadi population was about the same as the 
rest of the muslims, the Ahmadis would earn the right to ask you to 
forego your title as 'muslim' since obviously they would frown upon 
your tenets and believe that you represent a distorted version of 
Islam. 

[I vote YES to this group. Who's taking the votes anyway ?]

regards,
--   
   ______ ______ ______ ______ __  |\/\/\/|
    ____/  __  /  __  /  __  /  /  |  \  /|  LIFE's COMPLEX - IT HAS
   / __   /   /  /   /  /   /  /   | (o)(o)  REAL & IMAGINARY PARTS.
  /   /  /   /   ___/  __  /  /    C      _) 
_____/ _____/ __/   __/ __/ ______/ | \___|  
E-mail - gagrawal@cs.tamu.edu       |   /   All Std. Disclaimers apply.
From: majafri@cco.caltech.edu (Mansoor  A. Jafri)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Hijacking of democracy Re: S.R.I.A.
Date: 15 Nov 92 19:36:30 GMT
Article-I.D.: gap.1e68ruINNd0u
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandman.caltech.edu

In article <1992Nov14.183304.1@uwovax.uwo.ca> 3040_3744@uwovax.uwo.ca writes:
>Hijacking of democratic process by Mr. Mansoor Jaffrey
>
>I am very much appalled by the act of Mr. Mansoor Jaffrey who attempted to 
>hijack the democratic process of creating a new group on the network. He posted
>an article yesterday in News.group, News.anounce.news.group,
>Soc.culture.pakistan, soc.culture.Bangladesh, soc.culture.india and
>soc.relegion.islam about calling for vote with regards to the
>soc.relegion.islam.ahmadiyya, illegally and dishonestly. I am very much

	Before you go on, lets look at the sequence of events.

	1. Rana submits a RFD to news.announce.newgroups. 
	2. Rana's RFD is approved by David Lawrence and posted.
	3. Rana posts a CFV on news.groups (without submitting to n.a.newgrps)
	4. Rana's above CFV is termed invalid, Rana apologizes.
	5. News.groups readers object to Rana as being a vote-taker as well
	   as the proposed moderator.
	6. Like anyone else could, I volunteered to take vote and sent 
	   a CFV to news.announce.newgroups.
	7. David Lawrence approved it and posted it on news.announce.newgroups
	   and all related forums.
        8. David Lawrence (without informing me & on basis of Rana's personal
           note to him) cancells my CFV and posts Rana's instead.
	9. Raja reposts my CFV on other related groups.

	So there, you have it. If anyone is to be blamed for confusion it 
	is David Lawrence. If anyone needs to apologize it is YOU who went
	on smearing allegations on me without first finding out what is going
	on. Be careful next time. 
>
>Hameed Mirza
>    

M.A.J
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee)
Subject: Re: RF(Informal)D: Standard RFD/CFV Format
Keywords: RFD CFV formats guidelines votes
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 03:00:26 GMT

In article <1ec6spINNn0q@talon.UCS.ORST.EDU> stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley) writes:
>I.e, This experienced user who read the guidelines didn't notice that the
>guidelines are silent about the Subject line of the CFV, but assumed
>that the guidelines required them to be a certain way.
>
>Folks, there will always be people who don't understand what they read
>or what they are told. You can write flawless prose to describe the
>voting process, and force people to read it, but there will still be
>those who don't understand.
>
>If we allow the mere existance of those who don't understand the process
>to keep us from having a process, we are fools. If we continually change
>the process to make those who can't understand the current one happy, we
>will wind up with NOBODY knowing what is going on.

Despite the wordplay one can do with the word "assume", it is necessary to make
assumptions in order to function in the real world.  Texts which lead people to
make poor assumptions are poorly written, even if the text, taken word for
word, literally says what was intended.

(You're also using the fallacy "because we can't make it perfect, let's not
bother making it better", which I've seen far too often.)
--
"the bogosity in a field equals the bogosity imported from related areas, plus
the bogosity generated internally, minus the bogosity expelled or otherwise
disposed of."  -- K. Eric Drexler

Ken Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
     INTERNET: arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu)
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom)
Subject: Re: Give up, Dave, you've lost!
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 19:32:59 GMT
Organization: IBM Research

In article <7874@lib.tmc.edu>, jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes:

|> 
|> The problem is that this would disallow one coherent vote on the kind of thing
|> that this reorg (only one part of which is in question) was designed to
|> address: How do you bring related groups that are currently in different
|> places in the hierarchy together?
|> 

As I posted elsewhere, one of the things being voted on was
whether the groups alleged to be related were, in the opinion
of the voters, actually related in the way being claimed.

I don't know what the meaning is of "one coherent vote".
I am looking at the guidelines in news.announce.newusers,
and it says:

7) A vote should be run only for a single group proposal.  Attempts to create
   multiple groups should be handled by running multiple parallel votes rather
   than one vote to create all of the groups.

So it is already forbidden to run *one vote* for multiple groups.
I assume you meant *one ballot*.  In my opinion, if there is
any doubt as to whether people will agree on the relatedness
of the votes, there should be several ballots, although they
can be posted on the same date.  If the groups turn out to
be as related as the proposers think they are, people will
see all the ballots and vote them;  otherwise they won't.
That's why I proposed a purely syntactic and not a semantic
test for merging votes onto a ballot.  Otherwise the person
composing the ballot is presuming the truth of the very
question being voted.


|> A related question is how you would have handled the rec.ham-radio reorg.
|> There, the hierarchy was moved, two additional groups were created, and one
|> group moved out. The discussion and vote went smoothly, and the reorg was a
|> success. Splitting up this related set of proposals into three separate
|> discussions and votes, or even just three separate votes, would have created
|> significant extra traffic for the net and work for me.
|> 
Presumably you were the vote-taker for the rec.ham-radio reorg.
(I don't read any of those groups, so I know nothign about it.)
Why is it significantly harder to sort the yes/no in each of
3 different piles than to sort 3 columns of yes/no in one
single pile?

I think the percentage of network traffic devoted to votes
is small enough relative to the total network traffic that
multiplying it by a small factor is not a serious impact.


-- 
Rob Strom, strom@watson.ibm.com, (914) 784-7641
IBM Research, 30 Saw Mill River Road, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY  10598
From: gvh@metrosoft.com (Gordon Van Huizen)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RF(Informal)D: Standard RFD/CFV Format
Date: 15 Nov 92 13:22:31 GMT
Reply-To: gvh@metrosoft.com (Gordon Van Huizen)
Organization: Metrosoft

In article <Bxr9Lo.Ioo@unix.amherst.edu> twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim  
Pierce) writes:
> Perhaps, instead of two new lines, RFDs and CFVs could include three:
> "Groups proposed," "Groups renamed or deleted," and "Other groups
> affected."  I agree that a group being renamed or removed under
> such a system shouldn't be lumped in with other groups which simply
> have a similar topic.
> 

Wow! We're making real progress here. This is great!

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Gordon Van Huizen           vox: 619.488.9411  fax: 619.488.3045
Metrosoft                   gvh@metrosoft.com [NeXTmail welcome]
----------------------------------------------------------------
From: gdg019@cch.coventry.ac.uk (Ridley McIntyre)
Subject: Re: rec.games.frp.campaign is a split? Get real.
Organization: Pig Heaven, Coventry, UK
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 10:22:43 GMT

In article <3b#@byu.edu> gritton@byu.edu writes:
>hartman@ulogic.UUCP (Richard M. Hartman) writes:
>
>> In article <BxHnx8.4FJ@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> cbnorman@cayley.uwaterloo.ca writes:
>
>> One of the prime requisites for newsgroup
>> splitting (which is actually what you are proposing, splitting .misc
>> into .misc and .campaign, because .misc is where campaign discussions
>> currently would be) is ...
>
>   You can't be serious. By your logic, every new newsgroup proposed
>is no more than a split from, at the least, misc.misc.

What's the point of splitting for splitting's sake? If there was a vast
amount of campaign traffic going on in r.g.f.misc then there would be a
NEED for a .campaign newsgroup. I don't see hundreds of people posting
their campaign stuff, do you? The idea of a misc newsgroup is that it
encompasses everything. If there is enough (read: too much) regular traffic to
warrant a new newsgroup to cover a certain topic, then why not have a new
newsgroup. The only campaign stuff I see appears on r.g.f.archives (this,
BTW, includes my own) but I wouldn't say it justifies its own newsgroup.

>> Go to rfp.misc.  Talk about campaigns for a while.
>> show that there is enough continuing traffic on this one issue for a 
>> significant period of time to justify a new group.
>
>   So if I want a group on some totally new subject, I should go to
>misc.misc and see if I can get people there interested in it? Not
>bloody likely.

No, you go to news.groups...

Recently there has been a few discussions of this sort on rec.arts.sf.movies,
where loads of people have been discussing alien and blade runner. There were
proposals for a rec.arts.sf.movies.alien and a rec.arts.sf.movies.blade-runner,
but both were stomped on because although the traffic was heavy at the time
for those subjects, it was never a regular disscussion worth starting a brand
new newsgroup for. The same applies here, and you haven't even got the privilege
of taking up over 50% of the articles with the proposed subjects. 

>James Gritton - gritton@byu.edu - I disclaim

Rid McIntyre.
-- 
                  Ridley McIntyre - Ronin Ironpig
*On a Flowery	     gdg019@cck.coventry.ac.uk          Space Trip!*
		 ---------------------------------
"The thing about Conventionalism is that it f**ks up everything" - Leon Hunt
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: huggins@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Jim Huggins)
Subject: Re: A new posting for voters
Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept., Ann Arbor, MI
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 16:07:35 GMT

In article <1992Nov16.034826.15893@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov writes:
|huggins@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Jim Huggins) writes:
|>Anyone interested in working on a "How to Participate in Newsgroup
|>Creations and Renamings" document?  I don't know that I've got
|>the time to manage the effort, but I'd be willing to help.
|
|I am, but the guidelines revs should come first...otherwise the
|document will just have to be rewritten.

Well ... methinks that changing the Guidelines will take a lot longer
than putting together a new FAQ posting and getting it approved by Spaf.
(And besides, there are probably other FAQs which will have to be
changed besides the Guidelines if the Guidelines change.)  It probably
wouldn't hurt any to put such a guide together now.

(Aside: has anyone actually put forth a new proposed Guidelines?
It's easy to put forth all sorts of sound-n-fury about changing them,
but we really should get on with it if we're going to do it.)
-- 
Jim Huggins, Univ. of Michigan                          huggins@eecs.umich.edu
"You cannot pray to a personal computer no matter how user-friendly it is."
                                                          -- W. Bingham Hunter
Newsgroups: news.groups,alt.usenet.culture