🚀 go-pugleaf

Pete Hodgins wrote:

> It would be premature now to post an actual proposal for a can.arts.lit
> group. Some months ago I tried to organize a similar group at the
> level of the ott.* hierarchy, and found it wouldn't fly because of the
> vast personal effort I was expected already to have put out. First,
> as I learned the hard way, a whole lot of organizing must have been
> completed.

I invite interested parties to review the proposal in ott.config;
a search on http://groups.google.ca/ will turn it up.  The following
should help uncover much of the history:

  http://groups.google.ca/groups?q=Pete+Hodgins&&meta=group%3Dott.config

As was suggested in the discussion for the ott.* group, it would be
worthwhile to a) investigate whether or not there is traffic in groups
with a wider audience that would benefit from a group with Canadian
appeal, and b) perhaps elicit support from (Canadian) members of any
such wider group.  ("b" is easy: simpy crosspost your proposal to those
groups that would be appropriate, and direct followups to this group).

You're going to find that can.* is not entirely unlike ott.* with
respect to newsgroup creation, in that you're basically trying to show
to news administrators that the group you're proposing is worthwhile to
carry on their news servers.  Some (often myself) will counter your
proposal with suggestions they feel will make the group viable in the
long term, or easier to find, or more accessible to a wider audience, or
(insert some other aspect that may be of concern).

This is not to be confused with "nit-picking", as you suggested was
occurring in your ott.* proposal, but rather, should be viewed as
genuine attempts to help you get the group created in such a way that
news administrators across the country will agree to carry the group.
This is usually no small feat!

If you disagree with suggestions folks are making for modifications to
your proposal, by all means, please feel free to express that, but please
do take the time to consider the suggestions, and the reasons they're
being made.  If, for example, your can.* group ended up carried only by
news administrators in Ontario, because of some detail that other news
admins disagreed with, it would be a real shame to have the group be
created under the can.* hierarchy.

> That job could only be done if numerous active participants could be
> found to publicize the proposal adequately. Instead, for the ott.*
> proposal, not one other person ever volunteered to provide the
> leadership effort really needed.

That's not at all unusual, but like I mentioned above, simply
corssposting your proposal to a small number of other, reasonably
related newsgroups should be sufficient for that.

> The challenge will clearly be far greater at the national level.
> With a fulltime writing career plus lots of other demands upon my time,
> and at age 71 as well as with very poor hearing, I just am not up to
> meeting such a huge challenge as a "team" of just one.

You have to keep something in mind:  The *.config newsgroups are usually
frequented by folks (many of whom are news administrators) whose interest
is in seeing the development of the particular hierarchy proceed according
to agreed upon needs/conventions/what-have-you.  In order to broaden
the support you have from others, beyond having them post "me too"
responses, you'll need to reach out to those folks for whom the group
you're considering will be a valuable resource: other writers, editors,
publishers, etc.

The best way to do that, with the least effort will be to discuss your
proposal in existing writing-related newsgroups, mailing lists, and/or
web forums.  Let thos folks know what you'd like them to help with,
regarding creation of the new group, and proceed from there.

The good news about all this, is that any hearing difficulty you have
will simply not be a handicap in these situations, so long as your typing
fingers are healthy!  :-)

> At the same time, with the human resources theoretically available
> at the national level, and given that "many hands make light work",
> in principle it should - and in reality it just may - be possible to
> assemble a workforce capable of getting the job adequately done.

I feel I may need to warn you ... can.config is the wrong place to find
nation-wide "human resources" ...  Of late, I seem to be the only active
news administrator who takes part in discussion of new group proposals
...

> Well, all that's not going to happen twice! If there's to be no
> group effort there will be no effort at all, as far as I'm concerned.

Fair enough, but you'll need to find your "group effort" from folks who
will be as motivated to create the group -- other writers ...

> This observation implies, though, that the existing sf group can be
> merged into a broader can.arts.lit group. If it cannot, it would seem
> appropriate to rename it "can.arts.lit.sf", clarifying the relationship
> of sf to all other writings or literature, and also of literature to
> all other arts.

Both of these, in an ideal world, would seem suitable, but
unfortunately, neither is feasible in the netnews world in which we
live.   It's simply not possible to ensure that renaming, merging, or
deleting groups (in can.*, at least) will be done on every news server
that carries these groups.

It can easily be argued that science fiction encompasses many art forms,
including, but certainly not limitted to literature, and therefore it
would not be unreasonable for can.arts.sf to co-exist alongside
can.arts.lit.

> Any relevant comments will be welcome ...

I hope you find mine helpful ...

-- 
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Sylvain Robitaille                              syl@alcor.concordia.ca
 
Systems analyst / Newsmaster                      Concordia University
Instructional & Information Technology        Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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