From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics
Subject: Re: META: Re: RAC SPLIT
Date: 9 Apr 92 07:58:28 GMT
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

In article <1992Apr8.214543.24488@Princeton.EDU> ssircar@canon.com (Subrata Sircar) writes:

>This is not (IMHO) fairly high.  Princeton gets about 110 messages a day in
>rac, while getting 200+ in sf-lovers (and we still haven't seen a split there)

You _haven't_?  The group was split months ago.  The existing hierarchy
now includes:

rec.arts.sf.announce
rec.arts.sf.written
rec.arts.sf.misc
rec.arts.sf.science
rec.arts.sf.fandom
rec.arts.sf.marketplace
rec.arts.sf.movies
rec.arts.sf.reviews
rec.arts.sf.tv

I understand some places are still aliasing rec.arts.sf.misc to
rec.arts.sf-lovers, but I'm surprised if it's true that Princeton
is not yet getting the other groups.

In any case, I remain in favor of putting the r.a.c. split to a vote
as soon as possible, because my experience from other groups suggests
that the subject will not die until it's formally either approved or
rejected.  Personally I'm lukewarmly in favor of a split in principle.
I won't know whether I'm in favor of a specific split until I see
what the formal proposal is.  But regardless, I really have never
understood the kind of heat which these split discussions generate.
People who want "cross-fertilization" can read multiple groups, and
if people don't _want_ to cross-fertilize it seems unfair to force
them.  (If it's believed that traffic will rise as a result of a split,
that's tantamount to saying that the current setup is keeping people
out of the group.)

Maybe some people really can read r.a.c. in thirty seconds or whatever
people are claiming now.  Maybe others are logged in to slow systems
or have primitive newsreaders; since the vast majority of Usenet users
do not own or have significant control over the sites they read news
at, telling them to get better news readers is pretty pointless.  I
happen to be lucky right now, but I've used slow systems with
menu-driven news readers which would make me unsubscribe to _most_ of
the newsgroups I can now read with trn and a 9600 bps connection.  And
maybe some people can't read as quickly as others.  I can hardly
believe that the goal is to keep r.a.c. the province of university
students and such who have time and access to advanced systems, to the
exclusion of all others.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong, and the group shouldn't be split.  But
in any case, we're not exactly talking about Solomon cutting a baby
in two.  Certainly it's not worth capital letters and multiple
exclamation points.  :-)  (Though I suppose in tribute to the Silver
Age of Comics that's appropriate!  Remember when you couldn't read
a line without some hyperbolic punctuation?!?  Not to mention the
fact that even the most innnocuous whisper was puncuated my
exclamation points!  But enough of this!  Oops, I mean, enough of
this.)  I mean, seriously, the Death of the Net has been
Imminent since before I entered the world of Usenet back in the
hoary days of 1986.  (You kids don't know what it was like!  That
was back during the War-- the Cold War, that is-- and we didn't
have fancy/schmancy newsreaders like trn, and the University put
draconian limits on our computer time, and sometimes we read news
at _1200 baud_ on old Televideo terminals.  And... [reminiscensces
deleted to save space.  Besides, now tyg will probably trump me
by describing the days when you could read the entire Net in
less time than it now takes to read r.a.c.  :-) ] )  Heck, remember
the Great Renaming?  Well, neither do I.  But it's obvious that
the Net will survive more growth and more subdivisions than it's
faced thus far.  No one's life will be made or broken by whether
r.a.c. splits, and I simply don't understand the fervor that
splits engender (so far what I've seen on r.a.c. is nothing
compared to the anger expressed in the startrek or frp split
discussions, and I just ignored the sf one entirely).  It's
just not that big a deal either way.  Do the RFD, call for the
votes, count them up, and split or don't split as the vote goes,
and have an end to it either way.

Mike
-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Never let your sense of morality prevent
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 you from doing what's right!"
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 --Mayor Salvor Hardin of Terminus
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Isaac Asimov, _Foundation_