[comp.specification] CFV: comp.specification.z

Jonathan Bowen <Jonathan.Bowen@prg.oxford.ac.uk> (05/14/91)

                          ******************
                          * CALL FOR VOTES *
                          ******************

This is the FIRST call for votes for the creation of the newsgroup
comp.specification.z.

Please read this article carefully before voting.  The proposed
newsgroup is as follows:

NAME:     comp.specification.z
STATUS:   unmoderated
PURPOSE:  Dicussion concerning with the formal specification notation Z.
          For the complete charter, motivation, etc., please see below.

VOTING PROCEDURE:

  Send a message to <zforum-request@prg.oxford.ac.uk> with a subject
  line consisting of one of the lines below:

                yes for comp.specification.z
                no for comp.specification.z

  You may include a comment as a message if you like. Any unambiguous
  vote will be accepted, but any message with "if"s attached to the vote
  itself will be rejected.

  The voting period ends at 23:59 GMT on Saturday, 15th June. Your vote
  must be received before then to be counted.

  I shall issue a 2nd call for votes and a mass acknowledgement in the
  form of list of people who have already cast their votes around the
  beginning of June. This will not include an indication of how people
  have voted.

COMMENTS:
  
  The guidelines for successful creation of a new newsgroup require 100
  more YES votes than NO votes, and that the YES votes be at least 2/3
  of all valid votes cast.


ORIGINAL CHARTER, MOTIVATION, ETC.:

Charter: Comp.specification.z is intended to handle messages concerned
with the formal specification notation Z. Z, based on set theory and
first order predicate logic, has been developed at the Programming
Research Group (PRG) at Oxford University for well over a decade. It is
now used by industry as part of the software (and hardware) development
process in both the UK and the US. It is currently undergoing
standardization. Comp.specification.z would provide a convenient forum
for messages concerned with recent developments and the use of Z.

Motivation: Comp.specification is currently the main location for
messages concerned with Z on USENET. However there is also a healthy
mailing list for discussion on topics concerning Z, known as Z FORUM,
which is run entirely separately at present.  This was started in 1986
as an electronic newsletter by Ruaridh Macdonald at RSRE, Malvern, UK.
Since last year it has been run as a moderated mailing list by Jonathan
Bowen at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory. Currently there
are 190 subscribers from all over the world, including Europe, the US,
Australia and Japan; the number of subscribers grows weekly.  Many of
the addresses are local redistribution lists, so the estimated
readership is several hundred.  So far this year there have been 70
messages (i.e., around 200 messages per year); I would expect this rate
rise with the larger readership that a newsgroup would provide.

Moderation: I would suggest that the newsgroup should be unmoderated.
In the past year, I have found that the vast majority of messages for
Z FORUM have been relevant and have been sent out unedited. This would
also make discussion on the newsgroup easier.

Mailing list: I would be willing to maintain the Z FORUM mailing list
and cross-post articles between comp.specification.z and the mailing
list for those whose do not have access to USENET news. This applied
particularly to our industrial subscribers who we wish to encourage.

Archive: There is a mail-based electronic archive server at the PRG
which contains all the back-issues and messages on Z FORUM, as well as
a selection of other Z-related files. I would plan to continue to
archive messages on "comp.specification.z" on this server. (Send a
message containing the command "help" to <archive-server@prg.oxford.ac.uk>
for further information.)
-- 
Jonathan Bowen, <Jonathan.Bowen@prg.oxford.ac.uk>
Programming Research Group, Oxford University Computing Laboratory.