CfD: comp.society.folklore
Ran Atkinson
The formal proposal follows:
NAME OF GROUP: comp.society.folklore
MODERATOR: Eric S. Raymond <er...@snark.thyrsus.com>
TOPICS TO BE COVERED:
1. Maintenance and discussion of the Jargon File.
2. Posting/archiving of anecdotes, facetia, and satire illuminating aspects
of hacker culture, including things like computer filks and war stories
about famous hacks of the past.
3. Accumulation of serious oral-history material from the early days
and forgotten but interesting byways of modern computing.
4. Posting/archiving of `retrocomputing' software, that is emulations of
archaic environments or tools or `code satires' (things like the JCL and
ADVENT shells, INTERCAL, the 029 card-punch emulating editor,
5. Discussion & criticism of hacker-history compendia in other media, esp.
books like Jennings' _The_Devouring_Fungus_, Stoll's _Cuckoo's_Egg_, and
Steven Levy's _Hackers_.
CHARTER:
To give the hacker culture an on-line memory. Postings would be carefully
selected but not (in general) edited. An archive would be maintained and
made publicly available.
A fair percentage of the traffic would probably be humor of various sorts,
but the criterion for inclusion would be primarily its value as carriers for
hacker memes.
Attempts to pursue religious wars using the group as a forum would be
ruthlessly flushed.
The group would be open to co-moderation by representatives of important
hacker subcultures past or present, subject to net consensus.
RATIONALE:
The existing newsgroup with similar name in the ALT heirarchy has a
great deal of volume and a problem with noise. This proposal would
create a new MODERATED group to cover much of the same material but
would endeavor to reduce the noise. The existing ALT group would not
be affected in any way by this proposal because USENET and ALTNET are
different and ALT groups are not bound by USENET rules. Also, the
continuation of the existing ALT group would mean that an unmoderated
forum would also exist. Also, this new group would become the
preferred forum for discussions of the Jargon File and submissions to
the Jargon File.
The name was chosen because although computer-related, it is not a
technical group and most non-technical computer-related groups are in
the comp.society.* portion of the name space. The folklore extension
makes the general area of discussion clear to newcomers.
Eric Raymond and I talked about this idea in e-mail before Christmas
and he has already agreed to act as moderator should the group be
created.
PROCEDURES:
Per the USENET Guidelines, discussion should take place in news.groups
for at least two weeks. If a consensus has developed by that time,
then I plan to make a formal CALL FOR VOTES then and count them myself.
Do NOT vote now. Time is counted from the posting to n.a.n by the
moderator of that group.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran Atkinson
ran...@Virginia.EDU
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Wm E Davidsen Jr
I think the volume on the alt group justifies a group, if Eric thinks
he has enough time to moderate then I have no objection to it.
--
bill davidsen (davi...@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"I'll come home in one of two ways, the big parade or in a body bag.
I prefer the former but I'll take the latter" -Sgt Marco Rodrigez
Kent Paul Dolan
/----------------------------------------------------------------------\
|I like the idea of creating a folklore group in the comp.* hierarchy -|
|this would give us a forum with a much wider distribution than |
|alt.folklore.computers. |
\----------------------------------------------------------------------/
And, I would suggest, that is exactly the reason not to create it in the
comp hierarchy. System administrators do their best to use the high
level heirarchy nodes for culling unwanted material. Why make that more
difficult?
The only thing that is accomplished by intruding yet another chat group,
moderated or no, into the comp.* hierarchy is to put yet another time
consuming and sysadmin patience consuming exception line in the
newsgroup downloading mechanisms all over the net, for those who don't
like being browbeaten and bullied into subscribing to newsgroups
inappropriate to their sites.
I suggest a new toplevel hierarchy for "reely neet groups that deserve
the widest possible distribution because _I_ say so (into the face of
all logic and common sense and administrator choice)", and then you can
get your gun and go threaten the life of any sysadmin that refuses to
carry a new newsgroup in the
subscribe-or-you-die.*
hierarchy, for wimpy excuses like high phone bills or complete user
apathy or management disinterest or limited news spool disk space.
Computer folklore is fun, but it isn't going to cure hunger in our
lifetime, nor is there a crying need that it be archived to assure equal
access to the products of our boredom for following generations.
Let them develop their own legends, rather than stifling them in the
overflowing archives of our incredibly voluminous effluvium.
So long as uunet has phone lines and turns a profit for every byte
downloaded, there is no place in the universe of the net from which it
is literally _impossible_ to find a feed for any alt.* group if a
system's administrator wants it on the system badly enough.
One is forced to conclude that if a group is uncarried, it is unwanted
at the cost of carrying it, for whatever reason, and that trying to
force an administrator to carry it anyway by putting it in an
inappropriate part of the net hierarchy is a hostile act.
Leave the alt.folklore.computers material where it is.
Kent, the man from xanth.
<xant...@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xant...@well.sf.ca.us>