Proposed: alt.forestry

[Bill MacDonald]

Larry Caldwell <larryc at teleport.com> wrote in article 


> > Can you explain why anyone
> > would vote against a new forestry newsgroup.  Politics? Ignorance?
> > Stupidity?...and we have to wait another 6 months to vote! and how do
you vote?

> They would vote against it to keep down the number of spurious newsgroups
> that nobody uses.  If NOBODY had voted no, sci.forestry still would not
> have passed, because it didn't even collect 100 yes votes.


I voted No No for just that reason.  I was surprised to see as many as
seventy people voting.  There was a majority, just not enough all round to
justify creating a new group, let alone two.  I'm still a relative newcomer
to newsnet but this has been an interesting process to watch.  On
reflection, the bionet branches of the net do not seem to attract as many
posts.  A large proportion seem to be sourced from administrators in
various seats of learning.  Nothing against this but announcements of
forthcoming events are a bit too dry to generate good discussion.

I can't claim to be a regular poster to this group but I am a regular
reader.  Most of what is discussed relates to North America and I don't
know enough about the issues to comment.  I am learning, so perhaps one
day...

> A lively RFD process convinces the news.groups regulars
> that there really is a need for the group. 
 
I do not recall a single post in response to the RFD, am I wrong?  I
started off with the opinion that creating new groups would fragment
bionet.agroforestry.  Nothing has happened to change my mind.  That is not
because I am hard to convince!

> At this point, the best thing to do is probably to start an alt group and
> try to build readership.  

OK may be it is worth a try.  At least the alt group attract readership, 
only not always on-topic.   The ones that have few posts seem to become a
feeding ground for SPAM.  Are there enough foresters out there to keep the
forestry to spam ratio at a tolerable level?

regards

Bill MacDonald