From: gst@spdcc.com (Gary S. Trujillo)
Subject: CFD: out of body experience newsgroup name
Followup-To: alt.config
Reply-To: gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo)
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 07:46:56 GMT

A move is afoot to create a newsgroup in the "alt." hierarchy to discuss
"out of body experiences."  I hastily created a newsgroup, simply called
"alt.oobe," a day ago, and have received a number of complaints about the
name.  Being that I failed to follow what is apparently the accepted
procedure of undertaking some discussion in alt.config, I am now calling
for discussion on the matter.  Those interested in the discussion should
follow up in alt.config.

In article <65139@apadravya.princeton.edu> bpwing@phoenix.princeton.edu
	(Ben Wing) writes:

> This problem (of hasty newgrouping) seems to come up again and again ...
> I'm really surprised how many people don't realize that you're supposed to
> discuss (or at least mention) the creation of a new alt.* group in alt.config
> before newgrouping it, just to avoid total chaos.

How is one supposed to know?  I plead guilty, being the one who created
alt.oobe, and I once again extend my profound apologies.  I'll bet there's
something in one of the basic Usenet articles, which I haven't read for a
while, though I've been using Usenet news for about a decade.

>    ...Imagine a bunch of groups like this:
> 
>    alt.afl
>    alt.ode
>    alt.g7
>    alt.sids
>    alt.tt

Well, before reading the answers, I came up with answers for three of the
five, two of which were correct (I said "American Football League"), though
I certainly know about the AFL-CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations?).
That having been said, I do take the point, and now can be persuaded to go
for a longer name, though I think a good case could be made for keeping the
shorter names (think of the UNIX tradition of short command names that are
meaningless to outsiders: cp, cc, awk, vi, emacs, ln, cat, mv, etc., etc.).

>    alt.out-of-body is a good deal clearer to the outsider, and alt.dreams.oobe
>    at least gives a hint as to what the group is about, even if it's not
>    technically correct.

Well, I think this matter should be decided by people who plan to use the
newsgroup.  I'd rather see it as a subgroup of alt.paranormal than of
alt.dreams.  Are the objections to "alt.paranormal.oobe" as strong as
those to just plain "alt.oobe?"

> I would say, send out an rmgroup for alt.oobe and newgroup something with a
> sensible name.  Then at least there's a reasonable chance of the group getting
> widely propagated, which is less likely with the current name.  Encourage
> people in alt.dreams to use the new name, not the old one.  Send mail to
> Bruce Becker (news@becker.gts.org) kindly requesting him not to force the old
> name down people's throats.  Some systems will still have the old name sitting
> around, but hopefully it'll become defunct.

Well, first we have to agree on what a sensible name might be.  Are you saying
that the newgroup message for alt.oobe is not automatically propagated through-
out the net, and that some manual action is required to relay that control
message to some tributaries?  I'll get in touch with Bruce - who I know, sorta.

> |_...I would accept alt.out-of-body,
> |and think it has the advantage of being more descriptive than alt.oobe or
> |alt.obe, but it's more of a hassle to type, and, since it's more than four-
> |teen characters in length, the name would be truncated by sites running
> |"notesfiles" rather than some flavor of Usenet news (I'm thinking especially
> |of the IGC/APC systems (PeaceNet/EcoNet, and affiliates like GreenNet, Web,
> |Pegasus, etc)).  Well, I guess "alt.out-of-bod" isn't all that bad.  :-)
> 
> The 14-character limit is for each segment of the group name, not for the
> entire name -- otherwise groups like comp.sys.ibm.pc.* would be unreadable.

No, no, no.  I'm talking about "notesfiles" software here - which has an
absolute 14-character limit.  It's compatible with Usenet news at the level
of respecting the news header conventions of RFC 1036, but it has a very
different internal organization, and does actually limit the total length
of newsgroup names to fourteen characters.  I'm sure of that fact, and have
already had this discussion with one person who sent me a personal message
recently making the same claim as Ben makes here.

OK.  Perhaps we should conduct a multi-way vote in alt.dreams, alt.oobe,
alt.config, and alt.paranormal (any others?) to decide on what to call
the new newsgroup.

Here are some suggestions:

	1 alt.oobe			(the current name)
	2 alt.obe
	3 alt.out-of-body
	4 alt.dreams.oobe
	5 alt.dreams.obe
	6 alt.dreams.out-of-body
	7 alt.paranormal.oobe
	8 alt.paranormal.obe
	9 alt.paranormal.out-of-body

> Hmm, I would conjecture that there are easily 100 times as many people who
> would recognize the term "out-of-body" vs. the term "OOBE".  I bet most
> people, in fact, have at least heard the term "out-of-body experience".

You might be right.  Perhaps we should use the whole term, spelled out.

Comments?
-- 
    Gary S. Trujillo                             gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts               {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst