Xref: utzoo news.groups:16142 rec.arts.movies:28089
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!apple!bbn!bbn.com!rshapiro
From: rshapiro@bbn.com (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: news.groups,rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: REVISED CHARTER for rec.arts.cinema
Message-ID: <50456@bbn.COM>
Date: 5 Jan 90 13:49:01 GMT
References: <50326@bbn.COM> <1990Jan5.055309.5776@eddie.mit.edu>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 30

In article <1990Jan5.055309.5776@eddie.mit.edu> thakur@eddie.MIT.EDU (Manavendra K. Thakur) writes:
>I have some problems with this charter.
> [improved charter suggested; I'm mostly happy with it]
>

>	-- Is the article well-written?  Well-intentioned but poorly
>	   written articles tend to reflect thoughts and arguments
>	   that are best fuzzy or not well thought out.  Nobody
>	   expects expect Pulitzer Prize-quality prose or poetic
>	   paragraphs.  But if you can't be bothered to use
>	   good spelling, punctuation, and grammar, then you are
>	   calling into question just how much they really care about
>	   the arguments you are making.  (This ties into the first
>	   criterion: one sign that an author is making a serious
>	   argument is that the author has taken the time to proofread
>	   the article before submitting it.)


I wouldn't get too carried away with this. Language skills are not the
strong point of the (mostly) technical community which dominates
Usenet. That's a fact of life we have to live with. I'm not sure
you'll get many submissions if the writers feel they're being judged
on this basis.

My suggestion is that, unless the language is likely to lead to
confusion or misunderstanding, you should let it go. I'd love to see
an on-line version of 'Screen', but that's shooting a little too high
in the circumstances. People will want to use this group to learn,
which means that we'll make the mistakes that students typically make.
We should allow for this, I think.