Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!omicron.cs.fsu.edu!fsucs.cs.fsu.edu!peterson
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: peterson@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu (Eric J Peterson)
Subject: Re: renaming sci.*
Message-ID: <9001170817.AA01477@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu>
Reply-To: peterson@nu.cs.fsu.edu (Eric J Peterson)
Organization: Florida State University Computer Science Department
References: <50970@bbn.COM>
Date: 17 Jan 90 15:08:28 GMT
Lines: 59

In article <50970@bbn.COM>, mesard@labs-n.bbn.com (Wayne Mesard) writes:
|
| The main source of controversy in several recent group creation
| discussions is that there is no consensus about what belongs in sci.  I
| recommend that that top level group be remained in an attempt to
| establish such a consensus.  Here's my proposal:
| 
|    Change sci.* to univ.*.
| 
| This hierarchy will be for the discussion of academic subjects at a
| university level.  It will NOT be for the discussion of universities,
| university life or university anything.  It WILL be for the discussion
| of anything university.

Forgive me, but to quote Michael Palin in Monty Python's "Argument Clinic"
sketch, "What a stupid concept."  I assume that Wayne refers to the recent
debates over the naming of *.aquaria, *.history, *.philosophy.objectivism,
etc. as motivation for this suggestion.  But this only poses some of the
following questions:

  (1) Why limit the context of the sci.* groups to university level
      discussions?  There are plenty of message threads that are both above
      and below university level.  Who would decide what level a particular
      posting or thread was on?

  (2) Why change the actual name?  Why not just alter the purpose of sci.*?

  (3) Why change it to "univ.*"?  As Wayne makes clear himself, you would
      have to explicitly tell people that univ.* relates to universities in
      a manner that most people would not think of right away.  Why not
      just change it to "acad.*", as Wayne's article unwittingly hints at,
      if you change it at all?  This would be much more clearer, and would
      make more logically cover groups such as sci.lang.*, sci.math.*,
      sci.econ, etc.

  (4) Why worry about whether it should be sci.* or univ.* or acad.* or
      whatever.*?  As long as it groups the academic topics together into
      the same heirarchy, the name is completely arbitrary.  If we rename
      sci.* to univ.*, why not rename misc.* to etc.*?  Or soc.* to life.*?
      Or talk.* to discuss.*?

      ** VERY IMPORTANT NOTE **   This is not to say that I believe that
      the entire name of the group is arbitrary, as the rec.arts.cinema
      discussions here have shown.  But that group could just as easily
      have been named ent.arts.cinema, rec.media.cinema, or something
      similar, and as long as it was still grouped with the other ent.*
      or rec.media.* groups I should have no problem discerning what the
      discussion is generally about from the name of the group.

I think people should stop worrying about the group name so much and get on
with the content.

Eric

-- 
    Eric Peterson <> peterson@nu.cs.fsu.edu <> uunet!nu.cs.fsu.edu!peterson
 Florida State Univ CS Dept Technician, Room 011 Love Bldg, Phone 904/644-2296
                 echo "This is not a pipe." | lpr -P laserjet2