Xref: utzoo comp.lang.misc:3802 comp.infosystems:46 news.groups:16065 news.announce.newgroups:205
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!announce-moderator
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.infosystems,news.groups,news.announce.newgroups
Subject: Comp.lang.cobol failed
Message-ID: <604@enea.se>
Date: 1 Jan 90 19:13:47 GMT
Sender: woods@ncar.ucar.edu
Reply-To: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Followup-To: news.groups
Organization: Enea Data AB, Sweden
Lines: 44
Approved: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)


The vote for comp.lang.cobol is over. It will not be created for
two reasons:

- Too little interest, only 95 persons voted in favour, so even with
  no NO votes, I wouldn't have got the required 100 vote majority.

- Too strong opposition, 54 votes were against, which means that
  also the other criterion, at least 2/3 of the votes in favour,
  wasn't met.

Since the group failed, I will not waste bandwidth with posting
the voters. I haven't checked for duplicates and other misses,
but with the clear result, there's no need too. And, don't write
to me get a list of voters, I will delete the mailboxes just when
I've written this article.

There was a suggestion to form alt.cobol. Some of the YES voters
seemed to be quite anxious in having a Cobol group, so there might
be an idea to pursue that idea. I will not create it, though.

I wasn't so surprised by the low interest, possibly I had expected
to get some more votes. What was news to me was the strong opposition.
Most voters just gave a YES or a NO (which I appreciate, saves disk
space) so I can only guess, but somehow I feel that there were two
reasons:
- No traffic justifying the group.
- Cobol is a ugly language and shouldn't be encouraged with a
  newsgroup.
While I have no problem with the first argument, the other sentiment
makes me a little puzzled. First of all the argument seems slightly
invalid. In those terms, comp.lang.cobol has a precedent in comp.lang.c,
so what's the issue? Second, and more important, the quality of the
language has of course nothing to do with whether it should have a
newsgroup.

Anyway, that is of no interest now. Unless someone create alt.cobol, 
Cobol postings has to continue to go to comp.lang.misc.

Finally, thanks to everyone who voted.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
Unix is a virus.