Xref: utzoo news.groups:16510 rec.arts.movies:28574
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!thakur
From: thakur@eddie.mit.edu (Manavendra K. Thakur)
Newsgroups: news.groups,rec.arts.movies
Subject: REC.ARTS.CINEMA -- observations and revisions
Message-ID: <1990Jan17.190304.23309@eddie.mit.edu>
Date: 17 Jan 90 19:03:04 GMT
References: <50608@bbn.COM>
Reply-To: thakur@eddie.MIT.EDU (Manavendra K. Thakur)
Organization: MIT EE/CS Computer Facilities, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 140


I was away all last week at a conference in Washington DC, and so I'm
just now catching up with all the postings about the proposed group
rec.arts.cinema.  As moderator-apparent, I think I should put forth my
views on some of the issues that are being discussed.

First, the name.  I don't see any great benefit to making the new
group a subgroup of rec.arts.movies.  Making it a subgroup would be a
cosmetic change at best.  Rec.arts.cinema captures perfectly what this
group would be about, and I strongly support rec.arts.cinema as an
informative and substantive name over the cosmetic and dubious virtues
of calling it rec.arts.movies.film (or whatever).

Really, people, all this hand-wringing over the name of the newsgroup
is just plain silly.  Let's go with rec.arts.cinema.

Much more important (to my mind, anyway) is whether the moderator
should expect a good writing style or not.

I've read a few comments to the effect that writing skills aren't
exactly the best within the technical community, and we should
therefore not stress writing quality.

I thought I had made it clear what I meant by "well-written" in my
proposed charter, but let me clarify it once more so that I can lay
these concerns to rest once and for all:

I am not demanding that writers dazzle me (as moderator) with the
beauty of their prose.  I don't expect authors to agonize for hours
over whether to split an infinitive or not.  I don't expect authors to
spend a whole lot of time "prettifying" their article.

What I do expect to see is some sign that the author has *proofread*
his/her article at least once.  That's *all*.  I hardly think that
this is an impossibly difficult thing to ask.

Some people may not be aware of this, but newspapers are typically
written at the seventh or eighth grade level.  If an author can't even
manage that level of writing, then I am going to seriously wonder just
how much thought has gone into the article written by that person.

Writing in reasonably good English sentences doesn't take a genius IQ
or a PhD from Harvard.  All it takes is a little bit of common-sense
and the willingness to sit down and *proofread* your article before
you send it.  That's it!  Use your common sense, people, and do the
reasonable thing.  I think even technical people on the net should be
able to achieve that much.

At a minimum, I would like articles to follow the basic grammatical
rules of English.  (You know what I mean: every sentence should have a
subject and predicate.  Use plural verbs for plural nouns.  Avoid
run-on sentences.  Etc etc etc.)

And in this day of spelling checkers, there's simply no excuse for a
plethora of spelling errors.  (Typos I can understand, since they can
be hard to spot sometimes.)

Look at it this way: One of the important jobs of the moderator is to
keep the noise level down.  Articles that are too poorly written to be
comprehensible contribute to that noise.  One very big source of
poorly-written articles is the person who reads something and then
puts a slap-dash response together and posts it a hurry.  That is
*precisely* the type of article that would make me doubt whether the
article is meant to be taken seriously or not.

Let me rephrase my basic point once again: reasonably good writing is
not an abstract goal to be pursued for its own sake.  Rather, the act
of proofreading an article can very often help improve the
*substantive* quality of the article in addition to the writing
quality.  So my desire for proofreading is intended not to create
additional pressures for the author but to encourage the author to
improve the substantive quality of the article.

In addition to all this, Kent Dolan <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us> made the
excellent point that for many readers of this newsgroup, English is a
second language.  If someone who is proficient in English has trouble
reading an article, then how in heaven's name is a non-native English
reader going to understand the article?  Non-native English readers
may be a minority, but there certainly are enough of them to make this
an eminently valid concern.

If you want an example of the type of writing that I'm talking about,
just look at some of the reviews that get posted to
rec.arts.movies.reviews.  I don't think Mark Leeper agonizes over
every single punctuation mark in his article, nor would I expect him
to.  And yet his articles are perfectly readable and clear.  I can't
imagine that asking authors to read over their articles once or twice
would create a burden for our poor illiterate engineers.

So please, let's lay this issue to rest.  The point I'm trying to make
is that there exists a definite link between the style of writing and
the content of what is being said -- and that is what motivates my
wish for proofreading, not some misguided ideas about how terrible it
is to split an infinitive.  I feel that this "common sense approach"
is eminently reasonable and workable.

So let me revise Richard's revision (to my revisions to Richard's
original version :-) as follows:

	-- Does the article show signs of having been proofread at
	   least *once*?  Authors should follow the basic rules of
	   English grammar, and articles should be run through a
	   spelling checker.  Proofreading not only makes the article
	   more readable, but it can very often help improve the
	   substantive content of the article as well.  Nobody expects
	   Pulitzer Prize-winning prose here, and no one is going to
	   care if you split your infinitives.  All that is asked is
	   that you use a common-sense approach and take a few minutes
	   to proofread your article before sending it in.


One final point on this matter: it would be a stupid moderator indeed
who rejects an interesting article *solely* on the basis of
grammatical errors.  It would make a whole lot more sense to ask the
author to revise the article and make it more readable while
preserving the points being made.

Believe me, folks, I've had many of my article chopped up, hacked up,
and spit out by hasty editors.  I *know* what it feels like to have an
article of mine butchered by editors who don't take the time carefully
my articles.  That is the last thing I would think of doing to someone
who submitted an article.  If I went around alienating potential
authors all the time, I don't think that the newsgroup would last very
long.

So please have a little faith in what I'm saying.  We're basically
reasonable, rational people here.  There's no need to get concerned or
worried about zealously protecting against fascist tendencies.  I need
the confidence and support of r.a.c. readers, and I pledge to actively
work for that confidence and support.

I ask for readers to give me a chance to show that I mean what I say.

(And remember: if worse does come to worse, there's nothing preventing
the readers from revolt.)

                                Manavendra K. Thakur
				thakur@eddie.mit.edu
                                thakur@cfa.harvard.edu
				...!harvard!zerkalo.harvard.edu!thakur