Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!cbnews!wbt
From: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: naming conventions (was: 100 NO votes)
Message-ID: <10366@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 18 Oct 89 21:27:53 GMT
References: <33729@looking.on.ca>
Reply-To: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker,00440,cb,1D211,6148604019)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 64

In article <33729@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:
>In article <10193@cbnews.ATT.COM> wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker,00440,cb,1D211,6148604019) writes:
>>I think this is most incorrect, here.  The question of "do we want an 
>>aquarium group" has already been settled, by the existance of alt.aquaria.
>>Now, the drive is to increase the readership base of that group by changing
>>its name to something more "respectable" to increase distribution ....
>>
>>So the name is, and should be, the issue in this particular case.
>
>I think this is more incorrect, here.

Obviously wrong, as the point I was responding to was *most* incorrect.
How can something be more than most ?

>Otherwise I might ask how you
>would answer the question "do we want a weemba group?"  Ah, I see, because
>there is alt.weemba (or pick your favourite alt group that has come or gone)
>it means that we want such a group, and the issue is simply the name!

Nonsense.  We *already have* an aquarium group, and a weemba group.  The
point is that people are displeased that its name, *alt*.aquaria, places
it in some (disputable) net.ghetto.  They want a better name for the group,
in the hope that it will make it a better group.

Whatever name is proposed, the group still needs to pass a creation vote.
The name is, obviously, the critical factor in that passage; it is rightly
the focus of the issue at hand.  

>The name is the issue in this case, but it's a bogus issue.  It just plain
>isn't important, and I am disturbed to see people attributing so much
>importance to this non-issue.

This illustrates no more than your boredom with the topic.  For those
who want European participation in an aquarium newsgroup, the name is
very important.

If it bores you, stop wasting time and put it in your killfile already.

>And to top it off, alt.aquaria, which makes it to 73% of the arbitron sites
>(gosh, sci.aquaria, with all the controversy, will probably make it to around
>60%) still doesn't manage to get a single reader on half the machines it
>goes to.  That's right, out of 719 sites surveyed, 525 had alt.aquaria and
>there were only 260 readers.   And people say this has to go out to the
>whole net, and not only that, it should be put in the best distribution
>possible?

You keep bringing up this statistical marvel as if it's somehow important.

If my site doesn't carry, say, talk.origins because nobody here reads it,
then our downstream feeds can't read it, either.  The group stops here.
Now, when everyone starts applying this logic, perhaps rec.equestrian will
be cut off upstream from us; a pity, because, for this argument, someone
here reads rec.equestrian; or rather, did, until it was cut off upstream.
The result of this silliness is that only a few of the universally popular
groups will be carried.  

Instead, we carry talk.origins, and they carry rec.equestrian, and we're
both satisfied.  That leave only Brad who's upset with the situation, which
is OK, because he's got his own net and can carry whatever he wants.  


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Bill Thacker						wbt@cbnews.att.com
	    Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero