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From: rshapiro@arris.com (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.cinema
Subject: the charter, thr group, the (lack of) traffic
Message-ID: <1991Jun9.183042.11310@zerkalo.harvard.edu>
Date: 9 Jun 91 18:30:42 GMT
References: <1991Jun8.222345.8252@cfa.harvard.edu> <1991Jun8.224034.8360@cfa.harvard.edu> <1991Jun9.064801.11064@zerkalo.harvard.edu>
Sender: thakur@cfa.harvard.edu (Manavendra K. Thakur)
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In article <1991Jun9.064801.11064@zerkalo.harvard.edu> jimomura@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Omura) writes:
>     I wasn't around at the formation of this group, so I wonder if
>there was a specific problem being addressed with its creation.

The problem we were addressing was that r.a.m was (and is) completely
unusable as a forum for serious discussion of movies. Try it; you'll
see. 

Now, as it happens, I was planning to conduct the vote myself (since I
originated the proposal), but I was unable to do so because of a job
change. Had I conducted the vote, and had the results been the same, I
would have declared the vote to have failed. It did, just, meet the
letter of the law, but by such a slim margin and with such small
numbers, that it seemed clear there wasn't really enough interest to
justify the existence of the group.

But, given that the group was created, I was hoping to see traffic
that was, if limited, at least regular. After all, there are quite a
few serious cinema journals out there (Camera Obscura, Wide Angle,
Velvet Light Trap, Persistence of Vision, Screen, Film Quarterly,
Millenium Film Journal, etc). The readership may be small, but it
exists; and the contributors to those journals continue to publish
interesting articles with regularity. Why couldn't we do the same on
Usenet? 

But r.a.c is clearly dead in the water. Why? I can think of three
reasons:

1. The population of Usenet simply lacks interest in film studies. In
this case, we should dissolve the group.

2. The fact that the group is moderated has deterred potential
contributors. I think we need to focus the discussion around this
issue. My own feeling is that a moderated r.a.c has failed (through no
fault of the moderator's) and that we should now experiment with an
unmoderated r.a.c. If that too fails, we're back at (1).

3. People who missed the original discussion are unaware of the
existence of r.a.c or are unsure what the difference is supposed to be
between r.a.c and r.a.m. To address this, someone (moderator?) should
post regular announcements to r.a.m -- let those readers know that,
and why, we're here.



To address (2) and (3) at the same time, I think we should begin a
discussion, cross-posted to r.a.m, about the possibility of converting
r.a.c to an unmoderated group. Of course, we can discuss other
possible amendments to the charter at the same time; but I think we
should focus for now on the moderation (?) issue.