kanefsky@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU (Steve Kanefsky) (01/03/90)
This is a repeat of the formal call for votes on the formation of a new
newsgroup to be called rec.video.software.
The name was generally agreed upon during the discussion phase, with
only one or two objections. It was pointed out that "The
largest video industry group in the U.S. is called the "Video Software
Dealers Association." The name is not supposed to completely and
unambigously communicate the nature of the group to a complete novice
(who may have never heard the term used in this context), just as
many other newsgroup names would be meaningless to those who were
novices with respect to the newsgroup's topic. For example, if
I was interested in artificial intelligence but didn't know that it
was called "artificial intelligence" or that it was abbreviated to
"ai", how would I know to read comp.ai? There's always a tradeoff
between the length of a newsgroup name and its ambiguity.
NOTE THAT THIS GROUP IS *NOT* A SIMPLE SPLIT OF REC.VIDEO. As has
been pointed out numerous times, rec.video does not have a large enough
volume to warrant splitting for that reason. MUCH OF THE TRAFFIC THAT
BELONGS IN THE NEW GROUP ACTUALLY COMES FROM REC.ARTS.MOVIES. It is
just that, in the past, the people in rec.arts.movies never have had
much reason to read rec.video, and vice versa, because most of the
traffic in rec.video is hardware related, and because most of the
discussion is rec.arts.movies is about movie content and concerns the
latest box-office releases, not video releases. Also, no one
can argue that the amount of traffic in rec.arts.movies does not warrant a
split. The new group will relieve rec.arts.movies of some of the extra
traffic and allow readers of both rec.arts.movies and rec.video to have a
common forum for the discussion of video software releases and issues.
This group will be unmoderated.
Some of the primary uses of the group might include:
* Announcements and discussion of upcoming releases on video
* Queries about the availability of particular titles in particular
video formats
* Reviews of new releases (in terms of video and sound quality
and other factors relevant to the video transfer)
* Discussion of the video transfer process and the various decisions
inherent in the process, such as letterboxing vs cropping,
time-compression, splitting scenes, editing, supplementary material,
etc.
* General discussion about the relative merits of particular formats
regarding their suitability for the presentation of pre-recorded
video software.
* Discussion concerning the distribution of video software: pricing,
rental versus purchase, copy protection, etc.
Note that this group would in no way take the place of either Rec.arts.movies
or Rec.video. Rec.arts.movies would still be used for discussions of the
content of movies and Rec.video would still be used for the discussion of
video hardware and non-commercial software. There needs to be a group,
however, where people knowledgeable about movies and people knowledgable
about video can get together and discuss what's good and bad about the
video software market. Consider the success of rec.music.cd, which is to
rec.audio and rec.misic.misc as rec.video.software would be to rec.video and
rec.arts.movies.
You may vote YES or NO by sending mail to kanefsky@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu
(Internet) or ...!rutgers!umn-cs!kanefsky (UUCP) or kanefsky@umn-cs.bitnet
(BITnet). It is helpful, but not necessary if you specify your vote
in the subject line. POSTED VOTES DO NOT COUNT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
The voting will continue through January 11th, 1990. Any Votes received after
this date will not be counted. I will post a mass acknowledgement of votes at
that time, along with the results.