Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!chuq
From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: These stubborn group champions
Message-ID: <35637@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 14 Oct 89 04:19:17 GMT
References: <8910132350.AA08591@helios.enea.se>
Organization: Life is just a Fantasy novel played for keeps
Lines: 65

>You forget one thing. Patricia Roberts wanted the group in comp, 
>and she did NOT want it in soc, not even as a last-chance possibility.

Some would say that she held the group up for blackmail -- do it my way or
no way at all. How is this different from what people are accusing the
name.czars of doing? 

>This means that if the group had been placed in soc, she was not
>available as moderator.

So? If the group had passed under the other name, it's very unlikely that an
alternate and appropriate moderator could not have been found as well. She
was not the only game in town, so to speak.

>And soc would probably have been Greg's proposal.
>=> With Greg as name czar comp.society.woman wouldn't have been
>created.

If *I* were name czar, you could have guaranteed it wouldn't have gone in
comp. It was a stupid naming decision for purely and overtly political
reasons, and the content of the group (such as it's been) has been a slap in
the face to the high ideals professed during the discussion phase. If you
ask me, there was a strong piece of "I'll say anything I need to say to get
what I want -- once the group exists it's too late." to the whole thing.
Hence *one* of my reasons for being as stubborn as I have been on
sci.aquaria. The track record for naming decisions with a high political
visibility has not been good; practically speaking, it's really hard to undo
mistakes, so you have to work hard to keep them from happening in the first
place -- and, frankly, the high ideals I"m hearing about sci.aquaria match
in tone the same high ideals I heard (and disagreed with) in
comp.society.women.

>Actually, let's look at it a little further. If we had had the system
>that Peter Da Silva proposed, comp.women would have been taken to a re-vote,
>since it got around 150 NO votes. Say now, the proposal would have been
>soc.women.moderated. (With some other moderator.) That group would probably
>not have passed. Those who voted for comp.women wanted the group in comp
>and would either have voted NO to the new proposal or abstained. Of those
>who voted NO to comp.women fairly few had any interest in the group as
>such and would have abstained in the second vote. My guess, failure with
>75-50.

Let me ask: is this wrong? Under your scenario, enough people disliked the 
original name to scuttle it; enough people felt that the political act of
naming was more important than the content of the group itself. So the group
fails and isn't created.

This seems to me to be a great example of why this kind of system *can*
work, not a failure of the system. A group of people try to force through
their will on a political issue; failing that, rather than accept a
compromise, they take their toys and go home. That seems to be an
affirmation of the system. If the name of the group is utmost in people's
mind, my tendency is to believe that it's a political football and they
don't really care about the group -- they care about the creation of the
group (comp.std.internat is *another* classic example of this....). If
*that's* the case, the group shouldn't be created anyway.


-- 

Chuq Von Rospach <+> Editor,OtherRealms <+> Member SFWA/ASFA
chuq@apple.com <+> CI$: 73317,635 <+> [This is myself speaking]

Anyone who thinks that the argument over {sci,rec}.fishies is about
group names doesn't understand the system.