RFD: soc.culture.occitan

[Jean-Jacques Maurette]

REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
unmoderated group soc.culture.occitan

This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of a
world-wide unmoderated Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.occitan. This is
not a Call for votes (CFV); you cannot vote at this time. Procedural
details are below. French and Occitan language versions of this RFD
are available upon request to maur...@cict.fr.

Newsgroup line:
soc.culture.occitan Speakers of Provencal/Occitan/Langue d'Oc.

RATIONALE: soc.culture.occitan

Among the Romance languages issued from Latin, Occitan (also known as
Langue d'Oc or Provencal) is the most widespread of those not having a
status as a state or autonomous region language. An occitan
mailing-list of more than 100 subscribers is working, but some users
are bothered by the automatic reception of such mail in their work
mailbox, as the postings are rather frequent, and by the fact some of
these messages are not in their field of interest.

CHARTER: soc.culture.occitan

This is the charter for soc.culture.occitan

soc.culture.occitan would be a newsgroup for the discussion of the
langue d'oc area, its culture, language, politics, history, and all
topics normally discussed in "soc.culture" newsgroups.

The "Occitan" culture is the culture of the occitan-langue d'oc
speaking area, covering the southernmost third of France, the Aran
valley in the Catalonia autonomous community (Spain), the upper alpine
valleys of Piedmont and the Calabrian city of Guardia Piemontese
(Italy).

The occitan, culture is a culture of its own, which gained a flattered
reputation during the middle-ages with the trobadors (troubadours)
poetry and the catharian heresy.

These two topics, and the present attempts of revival of the occitan
language and traditions, would be the most often topics. We strongly
recommend, as this group would not be moderated, to include a topic
keyword in the Subject of the postings, such as History, Language,
Culture, Politics and so on.

The languages of the postings would be, Occitan-Langue d'Oc (without
restriction on the choice of the orthography), Catalan, French,
English.

END CHARTER.

PROCEDURE:

This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes. In this phase
of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroups
should be raised and resolved. The discussion period will continue
until the 10th November, 1996, after which a call for votes (CFV) may
be posted by a neutral vote taker if the discussion warrants it.
Please do not attempt to vote until this happens.

All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups.

This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup creation
guidelines outlined in "How to create a new usenet newsgroup" and
"How to format and submit a new group proposal" available in
news.announce.newgroups.

DISTRIBUTION:

This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups:

news.announce.newgroups,
news.groups,soc.culture.french,soc.culture.breton,
soc.culture.catalan,fr.misc.divers

and the following mailing lst:

lis...@cict.fr
subscribe via: list...@cict.fr

Proponent: Jean-Jacques Maurette <maur...@cict.fr>

--
Entre totis o farem tot
Jean-Jacques Maurette tel:(33)61 06 78 90
2,chemin du Canal fax:(33)61 86 40 83
31170 Tournefeuille France E-mail:maur...@cict.fr

[Christopher B. Stone]

In article <8455781...@uunet.uu.net>,
Jean-Jacques Maurette <maur...@cict.fr> wrote:

> REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
> unmoderated group soc.culture.occitan

>Among the Romance languages issued from Latin, Occitan (also known as

>Langue d'Oc or Provencal) is the most widespread of those not having a
>status as a state or autonomous region language.

I have two recommendations about this RFD.

First, I think the name of the group should be soc.culture.langedoc or
soc.culture.provence, as these two names are far more widely used than
"Occitan." Probably soc.culture.langedoc is better, as people may
mistakenly interpret "provence" as "province," and hence post information
about "provinces" therein.

Indigenous languages should not be used in naming soc.culture.* groups
without very good reason. In the case of soc.culture.galiza, the
indigenous name was justifiable on the grounds that "Galicia," the English
term, is also the name of a region in Poland. But I cannot think of any
comparable reasoning in favor of "Occitan."

Secondly, and far more importantly, I think this group should be
moderated. Unmoderated soc.culture.* groups suffer from an unreasonably
low signal-to-noise ratio. For instance, compare soc.culture.russian and
soc.culture.russian.moderated, and you will see that the moderated group
is far more substantive. Moderated groups are increasingly becoming the
norm in soc.culture.*.
--
Chris Stone * cbs...@princeton.edu * http://www.princeton.edu/~cbstone
"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been
granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.
I do not shrink from this responsibility. I welcome it." -JFK