Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!chuq
From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Namespace Spring Cleaning -- not this year.
Message-ID: <35650@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 14 Oct 89 18:40:51 GMT
References: <8910141059.AA09475@helios.enea.se>
Organization: Life is just a Fantasy novel played for keeps
Lines: 73

>>Unless, one should try to form a top-level domain covering the 
>>aspects of commercial life and workplace issues.

That sounds like a second level domain in soc, not a top-level domain of its
own. These are social aspects of commercial events and workplaces. (just
like, I might add, comp.society.women is about social issues revolving
around women in computers, not technical ramifications of having women in
computers, hence it should have been a soc group. But I digress. Again)

>This should be
>a "serious" domain, and be honoured as such.

Now we get into name space politics. Define serious. My definition: all
top-level domains except talk. Others would throw in rec.all, and I probably
wouldn't argue loudly. Others still toss in soc.all, and I start yelling. 

Fact: there are a bunch of newsgroups in soc.all that should really be talk
groups. That doesn't imply that soc.all isn't a serious domain -- just that
we haven't taken it seriously enough to kick the idiots over where they
belong. 

>  I'd like to emphasize the domain I'm looking for is not "soc". Soc
>is directed much more private life, and besides I wouldn't call
>"soc" a serious domain with soc.singles et al there.

My point exactly. You're arguing against soc because it's been overtaken by
the screamers. Better, rather than write the domain off, to move the
screamers off to talk where they belong. (Having just done a survey of all
the groups on the net, let me add that there is an amazing about of *crap*
out there. Anyone who thinks being a net.god (ret.) is fun and that you can
write up proposals like this on the fly has no idea of the stuff you get to
wade through trying to make good decisions. Just one more reason why I don't
want to carry this through, now.

You'll note in my pre-draft I didn't deal with moving stuff to talk or with
the talk.all domain -- on purpose, since those were issues I chose to ignore
for now. I had a good number of groups I would have suggested for movement
into talk, except that I'm not crazy and I know how much flamewar that would
cause....

>(In "soc" there would be no moderator available.)
>Unless Patricia Roberts has changed her mind, I guess this still is
>true.

See my other posting on this. There's no reason why Patricia has to be the
moderator, or even that it has to be moderated. If she doesn't like having
an appropriate name on her group, she can take her toys and go home, and the
net will just have to find a way to survive without her. Considering how
useful comp.society.women has been the last six months, I'm not sure the
net could survive her leaving...

>>Do you read sci.lang Chuq? I conclude you do not. If you did,
>>you wouldn't come up with that proposal.

You conclude wrong. Before I recommended a renaming, I read every group to
make sure I wasn't speaking out of my hat. Doesn't mean I didn't make a
mistake, but I *did* do my research before opening my mouth.

>>>sci.philosophy.*	(soc.philosophy.*)

>>So philosophy is not a science? (Once again, a group I don't read,
>>but I don't like the attitude.)

Not as far as the people *in* sci.philosophy are concerned, at least
according to the postings I read. Actually, it ought to go to talk...

-- 

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.