Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!alembic!csu
From: csu@alembic.acs.com (Dave Mack)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: You want one that fits in 25 lines?
Message-ID: <1989Nov15.063123.2360@alembic.acs.com>
Date: 15 Nov 89 06:31:23 GMT
References: <45326@looking.on.ca> <41800006@inmet> <46614@looking.on.ca> <5170@ncar.ucar.edu>
Reply-To: csu@alembic.acs.com (Dave Mack)
Organization: Alembic Computer Services, McLean VA
Lines: 48
UUCP-Path: uunet!alembic!csu

In article <5170@ncar.ucar.edu> woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods) writes:
>In article <46614@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:
>>I would be willing to say *all* names be chosen by a disinterested experienced
>>netter, but other people seem to resist that.  
>
>  I think that's a fine idea (except make it 3-5 people). But you always insist
>on finding people who don't have strong opinions on the subject of naming.
>I claim such a person doesn't exist. Anyone who would be willing to volunteer
>the time, and take the inevitable flames and abuse that would go along with
>such a position, is going to have strong opinions on how groups should be 
>named. That's why a small group would be necessary, to overcome possible
>strong biases of a single person that might lead to a bizarre decision in
>a particular case.

Instead of randomly speculating about this, why don't you try it?
Line up a fairly heterogeneous group of five people and go through
the last few "controversial" votes, and see how it turns out. I
assume there isn't much point in trying this with non-controversial
groups. Among the groups to be considered, I'd suggest:

soc.sex
comp.women
comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac
sci.skeptic
soc.culture.{china/chinese}
soc.culture.asean
sci.groupware
sci.aquaria
rec.aquarium

Also, I'd suggest that you post the membership of the New Improved
Trial Newsgroup Name Cabal before the deliberation starts, and once 
it's over, each member should post his rationale (dissenting or
affirming) for the name finally chosen for each of the trial groups.
Let's get a taste of what's being proposed here.

Or, if you feel that absence of discussion in news.groups (and except
in a couple of cases, knowledge of the actual outcome) would influence
the Cabal members, issue advisory pronunciamentos on the next five
or ten actual newsgroup votes. If I remember correctly, there are
at least six or seven ongoing votes/calls for discussion right now.

As for picking the members, how about simply calling for volunteers
and picking the ones who haven't expressed strong positions on naming
issues?

-- 
Dave Mack