una at doliolum.biology.yale.edu (Una Smith) writes:
>Why isn't this proposal going in the sci.med.* hierarchy? It
>would seem to fit there.
It could be that the bionet has a much better reputation
for allowing serious scientific usage of newsgroups and has
superb technical backup in the form on mirroring to a mailing
list and archiving. Also, from what I have heard and experienced,
anyone who goes to the Usenet admins with a serious science
newsgroup proposal is effectively told to get lost behind a
lot of bogus technical jargon. Waste of internet bandwith,
wrong name (ultra big issue in Usenet), show the usage already
exists in a major way, etc.
>Also, Usenet (including bionet.*) is open to anyone with access
>to a Usenet news server and client software, thus unless you
>intend to moderate the newsgroup (that is, read all articles
>before allowing them to appear), you won't be able to effectively
>restrict the traffic to researchers.
Moderation has the effect of lowering active participation in
a big way. Thus an unmoderated bionet forum is a good alternative.
This is not to say that an unmoderated sci.* newsgroup cannot be
a good serioius forum as well. I find posting out a regular
"welcome" file helps keep participants aware of what the intensions
of the newsgroup are - which is generally followed and discourages
what is "considered" inappropriate.
Lachlan.
--
Lachlan Cranswick - CSIRO _--_|\ lachlan at dmp.CSIRO.AU
Division of Mineral Products / \ tel +61 3 647 0367
PO Box 124, Port Melbourne \_.--._/ fax +61 3 646 3223
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