Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!enea!sommar
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: CALL FOR DISCUSSION: comp.lang.cobol
Message-ID: <522@enea.se>
Date: 3 Dec 89 22:45:53 GMT
References: <480@enea.se>
Organization: Enea Data AB, Sweden
Lines: 42

OK, the discussion period is over, and I'm about to issue the call
for votes. Some closing comments from my part.

There have been three sorts of comments:
1) In favour.
2) Questioning. Is there traffic enough to justify the group?
3) Negative. Cobol is evil.

There have been several articles and some personal mail too in the
first group, including a coinciding proposal to form alt.cobol.
They are many enough to encourage me to go on and issue a call 
for votes.

We have, thankfully, not seen much of category 3. I did actually
receive a mail from a guy who thought that Cobol was evil and that
he would vote no because of that. (Bill Thacker, what do you think
of that?) Lucky for him and I don't share that attitude. If I had,
I would rmgroup comp.lang.c straight away.

So the second category which I have said things like "he might get
the votes, but will he get the traffic?" This is a very valid point.
Now, I have seen sufficiently many Cobol articles to believe there will
be some traffic, but I would be lying if I said that I predicted 500
articles a month.
  Another issue that has been questioned is that being the most
commonly used language does not justify a newsgroup. What justifies
is that someone wants to talk about it. Again, this is a very valid
point. Some of the supporters have intimated that they will post.
  The common problem is of course that the vote (or survey) gives
an indication on how many that will read the group, not on how
many that will post, and how much.
  Nevertheless, if comp.lang.cobol only gets 5 articles/month the
group may still be worthwhile to those working with Cobol. As
it is today, when they (we) run into a problem they have to go
comp.lang.misc, which might be a peaceful place. It might also
be the battlefield for a language war with tons of articles.
In that situation comp.lang.cobol would be a good place to ask
your question in without drowning in the rest.
  So, I will go for it. If you think traffic etc is too low, you
can always vote no.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se


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