harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Stevan Harnad) (02/07/90)
CALL FOR VOTES for the creation of a moderated Usenet group out of the
already existing Bitnet Psychology Newsletter, PSYCOLOQY, which
currently has 1400 Bitnet subscribers. The objective is to make this
group more widely available to the world psychology community through
Usenet.
VOTING PERIOD: February 7 - March 9.
Please send a YES or NO vote, **worded as described below,** to
harnad@phoenix.princeton.edu, *not* to this group as a whole.
The "r" option in rn is one way to get your vote to the right
destination.
The group will be co-moderated by Stevan Harnad, Department of
Psychology, Princeton University and Perry London, Dean of the Graduate
School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University,
assisted by Cary Cherniss and an editorial board for all the
subspecialties of psychology, including perception, cognition,
development, psycholinguistics, physiological psychology, behavioral
analysis, social psychology, personality, clinical psychology and
applied psychology.
Contents will include both the usual bboard materials (meetings, tech
report abstracts, notices, journal contents) and moderated discussions
of current topics in all areas of psychology. The latter kind of
contribution will be especially encouraged and all discussion will be
kept at an informed scholarly level, to demonstrate the enormous (and
as yet unexplored) intellectual potential of such an electronic forum.
The group will be sponsored on an experimental basis by the Science
Directorate of the American Psychological Association and an effort
will be made to ensure that all psychologists and representatives of
related fields have access and the opportunity to participate
actively.
Because there is already an UNmoderated Usenet psychology group
(sci.psychology) and because the Bitnet group's name (PSYCOLOQUY) does
not match well with the Usenet nomenclature, the group can be called
either:
sci.psychology.moderated
or
sci.psychology.org
or
sci.psychology.digest
or
scu.psychology.psycoloquy
If any of these four names would be ok with you, just vote:
I vote YES for sci.psychology... (MODERATED)
If your vote is conditional on one of these names, please specify which,
e.g.:
I vote YES for sci.psychology.digest
etc.
If your vote is negative, all options are voted against with:
I vote NO against sci.psychology... (MODERATED)
Please keep your message simple and unambiguous.
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Three relevant excerpts from the discussion follow:
-----
From: Todd Ogasawara <todd@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Organization: University of Hawaii
[Founder of sci.psychology (UNmoderated]
Having watched the USENET sci.psychology degenerate since I created the
group, I will be more than happy to vote for a sci.psychology.moderated
to sit next to it when you request votes...todd
-------
From: peter%ficc@uunet.UU.NET (Peter da Silva)
Welcome (eventually) to the net. I think that you will find the ".moderated"
suffix redundant, and the "psycoloquy" part is likely to cause confusion.
I would like to offer a suggestion:
sci.org.psycoloquy
As a .org group, it will be immediately obvious that the name is a proper
noun: the name of an organisation. There will be no confusion with any
nascent "sci.psychology" group, and people will be less likely to typo
the name.
-----
>From: mehl@cs.iastate.edu (Mark M Mehl)
If the name "psycoloquy" is so appealing to everyone, simply call it
sci.psychology.psycoloquy so news-reader programs simply have to look
for sci.psychology.* to get both groups.
If the proposed group is to be a newsletter (as the charter suggests),
then a group name such as sci.psychology.digest would be most
descriptive of its contents. In order for any Usenet group to attract
the targeted audience it wants, the name "must" be thoughtfully
selected. The suffix *.digest in Usenet generally suggests a moderated
group (although it doesn't have to be) that posts a brief newsletter.
If one want to call it sci.psychology.mag, that might be a second best
choice.
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--
Stevan Harnad Department of Psychology Princeton University
harnad@clarity.princeton.edu srh@flash.bellcore.com
harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu harnad@pucc.bitnet (609)-921-7771