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From: rshapiro@bbn.com (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: news.groups,rec.arts.movies
Subject: Re: REC.ARTS.CINEMA -- drawing the discussion to a close?
Message-ID: <50725@bbn.COM>
Date: 10 Jan 90 21:09:55 GMT
References: <50608@bbn.COM> <113@dorit.vlss.amdahl.com>
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Reply-To: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro)
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In article <113@dorit.vlss.amdahl.com> garrett@vlss.amdahl.com (Garrett Lau) writes:
>a good idea).  However, I must voice my objection to the name.  I
>thought "film" was a better term than "cinema," but in either case, it
>belongs under r.a.m. 


"Cinema" seemed to be preferred to "film". It's a more inclusive word
as well (since it refers as much to the institution of movie making as
to its products).

I've been thinking about the hierarchy question. My feeling now is
that it does NOT belong under rec.arts.movies. Regardless of its name,
r.a.m has a very specific approach to the subject which is not in any
sense a super-set of rec.arts.cinema. The two are parallel, not
hierarchical. The right solution would be to go with rec.arts.cinema
as is and rename r.a.m to rec.entertainment.movies or something
similar. Or maybe we need a "rec.movies" hierarchy with two (parallel)
subgroups (one for the existing r.a.m, a second for the proposed
r.a.cinema).

In any case, the problem is that the existing r.a.m group DOES NOT
define the base of a meaningful hierarchy, despite the fact that its
name suggests otherwise. I don't see how it can be in the interests of
a cleaned-up hierarchy to perpetuate that mistake. Rec.Arts.Cinema is
very clean from the hierarchy perspective; it's r.a.m which is the odd
man out here.


No, from every point of view rec.arts.cinema is the best of the
suggested names. It's a reasonable length; its meaning will be clear
to interested people; and it suggests the correct relationship to
other related groups, r.a.m in particular (siblings rather than parent
& child). What more could one want in a group name?

> Also, we already have a "r.a.c", namely,
>rec.arts.comics.

Well, that's ok. We have two r.m.g groups, too. I doubt there will be
any confusion between the two in this case.