Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!eecae!cps3xx!flynn
From: flynn@pixel.cps.msu.edu (Patrick J. Flynn)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Comp.Image.Processing (not HOW/WHY but WHEN?)
Message-ID: <1415@cps3xx.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jan 89 15:14:58 GMT
References: <172@vmsa.technion.ac.il> <589@wasatch.UUCP> <263@vmsa.technion.ac.il>
Sender: usenet@cps3xx.UUCP
Reply-To: flynn@pixel.cps.msu.edu (Patrick J. Flynn)
Organization: Pattern Rec. & Img. Processing Lab, CS, Michigan State Univ.
Lines: 52

In article <263@vmsa.technion.ac.il> ners001@vmsa.technion.ac.il writes:
>Since my original posting about a month ago (where the subject of a new
>group comp.image.processing was started), I have received about 20 very
>positive letters and I also heard from 2 people who thought that this
>was an idea before its' time.
>
>One negative person suggested we use comp.ai.vision (obviously because
>it is never used for anything else - I have been looking at comp.ai.vision
>for a *long* time and I never see *anything* posted there).

Well, there *is* some traffic on the mailing-list side (VISION-LIST) of
comp.ai.vision.  As I mentioned in an earlier posting, connectivity for the
USENET side does not seem to be very good.  There are two remedies:

- Talk to your news feeds.  Establish connectivity for comp.ai.vision if
  possible.
- Subscribe to the mailing list.  The address is vision-list-request@ads.com .

I can mail some back issues of VISION-LIST to anyone who is interested.  The
moderator (Phil Kahn) is also archiving issues, and has them available via
email or anonymous FTP.

>All the positive views came from people who work in IP but not in CG,
>AI or even CV, but still have to wade through all the articles in THIS
>group to find the 1 in a 100 gem that has anything to do with what they
>are doing.
>Now, we really should deal with the basic question -- What comes first,
>the newsgroup or the need for a news group.   The logic here is very simple:
>
>        1) A new newsgroup should be formed when the activity in an existing
>           group becomes so heavy that a separate group can be set up to
>           deal with one of the major sub-topics in that group.
>
>        2) Most people who work in IP (but not in CG) probably don't even
>           look at comp.graphics.  Since they don't read it, they don't
>           post to it.  Since they don't post,  there will never be a
>           "need" (see 1 above) to start a new group to deal with
>           Image processing.

So here's an idea. Set up a mailing list specifically for image processing.
Run it as a mail reflector, so no digesting of articles is done (this minimizes
the administrative hassle).  Publicize it in appropriate groups
(comp.ai.*, comp.graphics, sci.math, sci.math.stat, and some of the comp.sys
groups, maybe).  This should address point 2 above.  Then start measuring the
traffic on the list.  I'd bet that if you can get 100 subscribers to the list,
you should have no trouble getting a newsgroup for IP created (after the formal
vote, of course).

Any volunteers?
--
Patrick Flynn, Dept. of Computer Science, Michigan State University
flynn@cpsvax.cps.msu.edu flynn@eecae.UUCP FLYNN@MSUEGR.BITNET