Readership Report

[Cornelius Krasel]

In <C2ELDC.MqA at ncifcrf.gov> toms at fcs260c2.ncifcrf.gov (Tom Schneider) writes:

>In article <CMM.0.90.2.729548221.kristoff at net.bio.net> kristoff at NET.BIO.NET
>(Dave Kristofferson) writes:

>>bionet is not a standard "mainstream" USENET domain (as witnessed by
>>our separate voting regulations), so it is not automatically carried
>>at all USENET sites, but must be requested.
>...
>>The bigger question is, "Is this a problem?"  Personally, I doubt it.
>>It does create a barrier in as much as someone at a biology department
>>must take some action to get started after they get their news set up
>>instead of just watching "sci float by 8-)."

>I don't agree.  I have come across folks who were quite surprised
>that bionet existed.  If a person doesn't get the news group when
>the fire up their news reader, they don't think it exists and they
>don't think to talk to their news administrator to see it it exists.

How does an innocent scientist learn that bionet exists? I think only
a few people have stumbled across the NAR paper last year, and
of these, even less know what "News" or "email" are (at least in
Germany I feel people are quite ignorant of this). I have learned
of bionet by chance when I got the possibility to read news
(this is a student's account). But I agree with Tom that many
people out there do not know about bionet (and at least some
of these who know ask "why should I waste time with this stuff?").
--
/* Cornelius Krasel, Department of Physiological Chemistry, U Tuebingen    */ 
/* email: krasel at studserv.zdv.uni-tuebingen.de (Internet)   HAS CHANGED!!  */
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/* "People are DNA's way of making more DNA." (R. Dawkins / anonymous)     */