Xref: utzoo news.groups:10761 news.admin:6229 sci.misc:3696 sci.philosophy.tech:1287 sci.psychology:2109 talk.origins:5671 talk.religion.newage:3655 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi From: dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin,sci.misc,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.philosophy.meta,sci.psychology,talk.origins,talk.religion.newage Subject: Re: *** CALL FOR DISCUSSION *** Creation of group sci.fringe.news Message-ID: <8162@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> Date: 11 Jul 89 01:41:21 GMT References: <2626@yunexus.UUCP> Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) Followup-To: news.groups Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana Lines: 33 In article <2626@yunexus.UUCP> gall@yunexus.UUCP (Norman R. Gall) writes: >It seems that my idea for sci.skeptic has somewhat backfired on me. >Even though I have a 70:30 yes:no ratio in the on-going vote, I feel >that the dissent is much too strong to let it go through with no >concensus. The proposal was not bad, but there were a few minor problems with it. The wording of the proposal wasn't clear enough. The newsgroup sci.skeptic should not be about the topics that were listed. It should be about *methods* of examining these topics. I suspect it was meant to be that, but this was not clearly stated. The proposal made it difficult for people to cast votes by requiring them to type (or carefully edit in) a brand-new reply address for a yes or no vote. You can almost bet there were many unnecessarily-bounced votes. There should have been a reply-to address ready for minor editing. Finally, this big cross-posting. The referenced article was posted to about eight different newsgroups but follow-ups were not directed anywhere. So what can we do about this? I think sci.skeptic is needed. Not just Usenet, but the whole world, needs a more scientific examination of various paranormal claims. It may be wise to cancel the current vote, allow some breathing time, and propose the newsgroup again. -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP: ...!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi