Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!lamy
From: lamy@ai.utoronto.ca (Jean-Francois Lamy)
Newsgroups: can.francais
Subject: Re: Question about this group.
Message-ID: <89Nov14.085457est.2165@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Date: 14 Nov 89 13:55:58 GMT
References: <18135@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Lines: 27

aeclark@watyew.waterloo.edu (Robert Fridrich) writes:

>Is the purpose of this group to converse about french topics, or can
>we also talk about french politics?

>Can someone please post guidelines to this group.

Guidelines? Heck, this is Usenet! :-).  More seriously, since there is a
can.politics, people tend to prefer seeing political discussions there
(including those that relate to language/culture politics).  When this group
was formed we would have thought there would have been enough French things in
Canada to discuss (French books, films, shows, culture, and just plain living
in French in Canada/North America).  Since all these items don't come to be in
a political vacuum some political colour was to be expected, but I don't think
that was the main argument for creation.  And yes, the discussions in
can.francais originally took place in French.

I think now that the problem is mostly that the French population on the
Canadian segment of Usenet is very small (for instance the only french
university actively on Usenet is Universite' de Montre'al, and then again I
think that only the graduate CS people get access).  Should the RISQ network
in Que'bec develop, there may then be enough critical mass to see
French-speaking newgroups formed on specific topics, and those would be more
viable than this somewhat artificial can.francais.

Jean-Francois Lamy               lamy@ai.utoronto.ca, uunet!ai.utoronto.ca!lamy
AI Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4