From: sp2@cec1.wustl.edu (Sundara Pandian)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil
Subject: Re: What went wrong ?
Date: 24 Aug 92 02:54:44 GMT
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu


 Sridhar Venkatraman writes :
 ---------------------------
> I am not going to regret writing this article anyway and I am going
> to make enemies because of this article and the ensuing action/discussion 
> so be it.

   Your posting seems to be a follow-up to an earlier posting titled
 `What a shame ?' posted by Sudarshan Ramachandran where he criticizes
 the proponents of this newsgroup with saying

>"I HATE TAMILS". I wrote this in a *sincere* attempt to understand ourselves in
       [ some material  deleted ]
>This very well seems to be unwritten charter for this newsgroup. Who are 
                                                                  ^^^^^^^
>these brain-dead who seem to think (it is another matter how the brain-dead
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>can think) that they own this (SCT) newsgroup? And what gives them the right to

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>preach what types of articles ought to be posted, and what not ?
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>What a shame !
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>Sudarshan (Flames welcome at : ramachan@usc.edu)

    His criticism was welcomed by S.N.Muthukrishnan and now I see your
 posting `What went wrong ?'.  I don't know whether you have read this
 posting by Sudarshan and this doubt arises when you are saying
 `I am going to make enemies because of this article..'.
    This newsgroup started well, but now we saw many hot discussions
 and these started at the period when Sudarshan started the thread
 `I hate Tamils' and this triggered a hot discussion in the net.
 There were some good replies given on this topic by S.Parthasarathy
 and, M.P.Premkumar's warm welcome of his article on Hindi in Tamilnadu
 is well-deserved. Other respested writers like K.Srinivasan also
 contributed their views on this topic, but the absence of a summary
 of the net's replies to this thread seems to imply that the discussion
 on this topic has become futile. Then Meenan Vishnu posted a informative
 series on E.V.Periyaar from a Ph.D. thesis, but this series got many
 flames like `Periyaar was the No.1 fool of this country' and `Let's
 build Periyaar Temple',etc., Also, I like to mention the hot discussion
 ` A threat mail from a boneless tiger in the net' by R.Thiagarajan 
 which could have been easily avoided if he had cared to look at the
 e-mail that he had received or by requesting the readers' help to identify
 the sender by posting the e-mail. ( I am not sure whether one can POST
 e-mails in general. The e-mails are confidential and one can't post
 them without the sender's approval. ) 
     I agree with Sthan ( Veeramany Sthanumurthy ) in his reasons for
 the current state of this newsgroup like lack of focus, lack of good-
 faith etc. The success of a newsgroup really stems from the writers     
 and if they keep a good language, good focus and faithfulness in 
 their articles, we are sure to have healthy discussions in this net.
 Titles are also important and meaningful titles should be chosen for
 the articles. ( I am also guilty of choosing inappropriate titles
 sometimes. Some of my follow-ups to `A boy's head was shaved..' didn't
 pertain to the title which was duly corrected by Sthan and others. )

> This group was intended to discuss literature/language issues right?
> The proposers of the group went at great lengths to laugh and
> ridicule many of the fears expressed at the outset even before the RFD
> went official. What happened, Sirs? 

    Have you been reading `news.groups' lately ? In the article
 `New Groups Summary' posted, you will find the charter of S.C.T. as
 
==============================================================================
soc.culture.tamil	Tamil language, history and culture.
=============================================================================
    Why do you think that we chose the title `soc.culture.tamil' if we
 had been working on a newsgroup just for literature and language ?
 Please read the full charter given for soc.culture.tamil to get to
 know what is this group about. There were many fears expressed on 
 S.C.I. before the R.F.D. was posted like `The creation of this group
 is like giving independence to Tamilnadu'. We laughed at such fears.
 A few S.C.I. readers like N.Vasuki called for patriotism and posted an
 article asking the S.C.I. readers to prove their patriotism by casting
 a NO vote ( even before the R.F.D. was posted .) We posted several 
 articles convincing them that the creation of S.C.T. is not like 
 giving independence to Tamilnadu and that they need not have such
 fears.

>Infact, I was told in email that I am offending the sensibilities of
>those people wanting a language-oriented group. Infact I was not.
>After all I knew how soc.culture can turn out to be and having been in
>the heart of Madras I know how people react (No offense here, it is
>pretty natural whether right or wrong).

  I admit that this newsgroup needs improvement and that healthy
 discussions for the articles posted in the net are in order.This
 can be achieved only with the co-operation of the writers in the
 net. I also notice that some good postings on the net like `Naangaam
 Tamil', `aRivOLi' , `modern Tamil literature' posted by Sankarapandi,
 Sundaramoorthy, Kuppuswamy Ravindran etc. have not received a good
 response that topics of such importance deserve. Actually, Uma
 Subramanian who posted many critical articles on Modern Tamil Literature
 in alt.culture.tamil has stopped posting any such article in this net
 and I suspect that lack of good response is one of the prominent
 factors .  
   When alt.culture.tamil was created, many readers complained me that
 they are not getting that group and I used to store the articles in
 that group in an anonymous ftp site for their benefit. Actually A.C.T.  
 carried many good articles on modern Tamil literature and it is in
 this group that Sankarapandi started his `Scientific Tamil' proposal,
 welcomed by M.P.Premkumar, K.Srinivasan among others. I am thinking
 of archiving S.C.T. articles as well if there is enough interest among
 the readers. ( I can start from September 1, for instance and store
 articles on a monthly basis like Sep92, Oct92 etc. ) I think that if
 this archiving is carried out, many writers will mind their language
 in their postings and engage in a healthy discussion rather than in a
 mere flame-war. I request readers of this net to send their opinions
 on archiving S.C.T. articles.
 
>What do I propose?

>If there is enough interest, I will go for an RFD. 

   This is uncalled for.

>Cheers,
>Sridhar.

                                                        S.Pandian.
                                               sp2@cec1.WUSTL.edu
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil