lumsdon@dtoa1.dt.navy.mil (Lumsdon) (02/22/90)
There's an existing newsgroup, comp.lang.idl, with extremely low traffic
(2 articles in last 6 months). It was formed for discussion of "Interface
Description Language". A bunch of users of another IDL ("Interactive
Data Language") have discovered it, and each other, and want a newsgroup
somewhere to discuss our IDL, and a nearly identical derivative of it
called PV-WAVE.
We've come up with several ideas:
1) A news guru said it's ok to join existing group, as long as subject
lines for our articles are explicit about _which_ IDL the posting is
about. He says this is better for the net than 2 very low-volume newsgroups
would be.
2) Go through discussion and try to form our own newsgroup, knowing
that we may not have enough votes to do it. Can we count the 15 users
at 1 site as casting 15 separate votes?
3) Continue posting our stuff in the existing group comp.lang.idl, as
there hadn't been a posting in it in the 5.5 months prior to one of
us asking what this group is for. Sort of a hostile takeover, with 1
poster politely defending the original charter of the newsgroup.
What does netiquette or Emily Postnews say on this? We could _really_
use communicating with each other about IDL and PV-WAVE. Which is worse
- 2 low-volume newsgroups or sharing a group that was created for quite
another subject?
Is there another course of action, one of which we're unaware?
Oh, I looked at the comp.lang.functional discussion, and IDL/PV-WAVE
don't fit that definition. They're procedural vendor-supplied languages
with variables. IDL and PV-WAVE are "interactive, programmable image
calculator and display systems used in analysis of scientific data",
with sorta-signal-processing and nice data-reading and nice image-processing
capabilities.
Thanks for any guidance!
--------------- My thoughts are my own, not the Navy's ------------------
Esther Lumsdon lumsdon@dtoa1.dt.navy.mil lumsdon%dtrc.arpa
David Taylor Research Center, a Navy lab
Annapolis Lab cm 301-267-3816 av 281-3816davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (02/23/90)
In article <1078@nems.dt.navy.mil> lumsdon@dtoa1.dt.navy.mil (Esther Lumsdon) writes: | 3) Continue posting our stuff in the existing group comp.lang.idl, as | there hadn't been a posting in it in the 5.5 months prior to one of | us asking what this group is for. Sort of a hostile takeover, with 1 | poster politely defending the original charter of the newsgroup. Following is opinion: I personally would have used the group until someone complained about it, but I'm like that. "Anything not expressly forbidden is allowed." Now that you have admitted to make good use of this dead group, there will be a great outcry to stop you from doing so and then to delete the group because it isn't being used. Then you can call for creation of another group (with the same name). If anyone really cares, you may have to move to comp.lang.misc until you get enough people there to vote for a group of your own just to get you out of the group. And some ideas: If all of you are on one site, restrict your distribution to local. Make a suggestion to change the *definition* of the group to include both flavors of the idl language, and get a vote on it. We have no procedure for this, so it should be amusing... people who never knew the group existed will defend its (unused) purity, perhaps. Form an alt group if you can, or use comp.lang.misc if you can't. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me