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Subject:Re: STC'S Electronic Bulletin Board From:Bill Konrad <konrad -at- SAGE -dot- CC -dot- PURDUE -dot- EDU> Date:Thu, 8 Jul 1993 09:32:25 EST
> Actually, how about a show of hands: how many people have USENET access?
> We could start something ourselves irregardless of what the STC wants. Is
> anyone interested in establishing a USENET group? We could probably
> start by getting this one echoed as a bit.listserv group, and then
> try for a hierarchy if there were enough interest (comp.tech.writing.sw,
> comp.tech.writing.hw, comp.tech.writing.issues).
Hear hear. ALthough this list may be a bit.* newsgroup in some places,
it is not available as such here (and I suspect in many other places
that get Usenet. I support the creation of a Usenet group.
It is possible to form an alt.* immediately, but it would suffer from
low distribution as many sites avoid the morass of alt.* groups and
refuse to carry them.
In the "regular" hierarchy, we would need to submit an RFD (Request
For Discussion) to the group news.announce.newgroups. Then after a
period of discussion (at least a month, I believe) about the
appropriate namespace for the group and its charter, a CFV (Call For
Votes) can be issued. Someone would have to receive, validate and,
count the votes (ideally someone non-partisan in the vote and with
access and understanding of vote-counting software).
The IEEE has it's own newsgroups, something like ieee.org. I don't
know how stc.org would fly though. There is also a group misc.writing.
I can see some arguments for creating misc.writing.technical but then
on the other hand, misc.writ currently doesn't get a whole lot of tech
writing traffic which is the usual argument for creating
subcategories. I'd be a little hesitant to have a general technical
writing group in the comp.* hierarchy, but aside from misc, I don't
think any of the other main categories would be appropriate.
> Moreover, this would make technical writers more accessable to the
> rest of industry. If someone had a question they could pose it to
> the usenet group. People interested in joining STC could find out how
> from a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) posted regularly. Listserv
> is a little more insular since only the people on the list really
> keep it in mind. Someone reading news has a better chance of seeing
> the site and keeping it in mind.
Your mileage may vary here. Newsgroups are more likely to pick stray
readers or occasional readers leery of overwhelming their mailboxes.
But on the other hand, there are SO many newsgroups now (over 2200
here at Purdue) that most of them get lost in the shuffle unless a
person knows to look for it, so you're kind of in the same position as
with mail lists, people have to know it exists (and how to access it)
before they can participate.
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Bill Konrad | What am I doing at a level of
konrad -at- sage -dot- cc -dot- purdue -dot- edu | consciousness where this is real?
| --Thaddeus Golas
| The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment
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