BIOSCI newsgroup ....

[CLARK at SALK-SC2.SDSC.EDU]

Tony Travis writes:
/
/ [stuff deleted]
/
/It is reasonable to assume that readers of the bionet.* groups are just
/as likely to vote yes for the creation of bionet.plants but not read
/the new group as voters from sci.bio or other news groups are, so why
/should bringing the CFV to the attention of *potential* readers from
/other news groups invalidate the vote?


I think it is unreasonable to assume that I will vote for a newsgroup one 
way or the other that I have no intention of reading. If there are enough 
botanists (or any other group) using the net that they think a newsgroup 
would be a benefit for them it's none of my business until the creation, 
deletion and other administration of underutilized groups requires so much 
time of the biosci staff that service of the other groups is degraded. 
Regarding sci and alt readers on bionet, bionet has hade enough 
unprofession discussion whose participants obviously have no idea (nor 
possibly any interest) in science, that I think we should make every effort 
to prevent more of them from occuring. On the other hand, people who are 
truly interested in the biological sciences should be informed of the 
existance of bionet. This does not mean that it should be acceptible for 
people to post questions to these groups that could be answered if they'd 
spent a few minutes in the library instead.


Steve Clark

clark at salk-sc2.sdsc.edu  (Internet)
clark at salk               (Bitnet)