weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) (06/15/88)
In article <44373@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV>, rick@seismo (Rick Adams) writes: >Acutally, taking context into account, the exact threat was that >if Spafford unilaterally, without first obtaining some sort of >consensus of the "backbone", issued a newgroup, I would immediately >issue an rmgroup until the issue was settled. >Quite a bit different from the original quote eh? Maybe, maybe not. You all knew this was coming up, and I think you all knew that no real consensus was going to be decided my mere voting. So it could easily look like stalling. >I'm still waiting for the answer to two simple questions: You do Penelope proud. They've been answered many times. > 1) Why comp.women instead of comp.discrimination or some such? There is also the business of theoretical feminist analyses of software, hardware and the like. And that of electronic harassment. And of ergo- nomic design for women. Etc. Discrimination is just one issue of many. "women" is a catch-all term. This also applies to the misc.workplace.women suggestion. > Are women the only ones with these problems? Since when is a newsgroup required to address everyone's problems?? Is this a new newsgroup rule coming in? I mean, did anyone take time to hold up rec.autos.sport because motorcylists might feel left out? No! It appears that the relevant women's issues are what some noticeable number of Usenetters are interested in. Why this is so may or may not be a fascinating side-question, but explaining this why is not part of the creation rules. I'll hazard one particular guess for one particular difference: Gays face a homophobia that cuts pretty much the same across their entire life. Women do not generally face this single core difficulty/hostility/hatred, and so can afford to explore the taxonomy of harassment/discrimination at their leisure. (Hell, I'd be laughed off the net if I campaigned for SOC.short-people even, let alone COMP.short-people. I mean, maybe you think there's no BIG deal about us sub-five-footers, but let me tell you, it's real tough. You can't even discuss heightism without the biggers giggling "aw how cute". The English language is loaded with heightist attitudes: we look UP to our heroes, not DOWN to them. People say he/she all the time, but will we ever get "look up/down to someone"? Of course not. And people *WONDER* why I'm so rude? Survival, man: it's simply shear survival in this cruel universe filled with you biggers everywhere. I mean, why do you think they call them nasty folks BIGots? Huh, answer that!) > If not, > why exclude the others? Who said they would be excluded? Is there something wrong with a news- group that deviates from its exact proposal now and then that is grounds for not creating a newsgroup? No, this happens all the time, even in moderated newsgroups. Given the name and moderation, I expect comp.women will maintain a reasonably good focus. Not as tight as comp.sources.unix, of course, but about as tight as comp.risks, and certainly better than comp.org.usenix and comp.misc. Requiring comp.women supporters to exactly delineate some fine line now would be nothing more than throwing a deliberately impossible requirement into the newsgroup creation process. The best anyone can do is give vague generalities, and remind you that this is Usenet, not Usenetopia. > 2) Is this problem unique to the computer industry. If not, > why not sci.women or soc.wgas comp.women seems to *FIT* in better with comp.{risks,society}. At least to me it does. I've asked before for a sci.policy newsgroup, and got a big zip reaction. Well, I got a vote from Tom Tedrick, who misunderstood what I was talking about anyway. That was it. I guess the sci.* folks just don't rally that easily. soc.wgas? Uh, right... That sounds like someone farted. >The proponents of comp.women continually dodge these simple questions. This is flatly untrue. I've answered these and related points numerous times, including the last time you raised them. I and others will con- tinue to patiently answer them for you, posting after posting, no matter how many times you assert that these questions have not been answered. Or do you still believe that all supporters of comp.women are RUDE, and therefore you put them all in your KILL file? >This to me implies that they can't make a case for it. Your repeated non-reading of the answers doesn't do much for your side of the issue. Sometimes they weren't anwered in direct reply to you, but if you felt these questions important enough to matter, I would expect you to have taken the time to wade through the other articles before posing ques- tions that have been answered repeatedly. >The group could exist TODAY as comp.society.women or soc.women.computers, So CREATE comp.women, and find out in one or two months if: o vast numbers of sites will nuke the group. o the group is appropriate for comp.* after all. o a comp.society.* sub-hierarchy really is desired. o "frivolous" comp.* proposals multiply like rabbits. Personally, I would blame the last on BOBber, not Trish. > The only basic argument has been the name. I, for one, have never seen a good answer to the question of why the name has to be "perfect"--ie, this "basic" argument to me should be a non-issue. I've seen >predictions< of chaos, >predictions< of Usenet getting canned at some sites, >predictions< of user confusion, none of which I find cred- ible. Nor have I seen a reason why the group can't be renamed later. We went through the Great Renaming pretty much intact. I have seen it said that simple inertia will keep the name in place: if so, then I find it hard to believe that the objections were that profound in the first place. I will make one very believable prediction: more people are going to be annoyed with this issue being dragged on and on than are ever going to be annoyed by the creation of comp.women. ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720