Well, here's the announcement - I'll come back with more comments at the
end. I've deleted the list of people who voted for and against, but may
make that list available a bit later on the LISTSERV archive, for anyone
who is interested, since it is part of the official announcement of the
group's approval and impending creation. For now, I'll say merely that
the list contains quite a few names I recognize from the mailing list,
so it is very clear that without the NativeNet members who voted, the
measure to create "scna" (as we'll call it henceforth) would never have
passed! --Gary ]
>From: hades@coos.dartmouth.edu (Hades)
Subject: RESULT: soc.culture.native.american passes 141: 40
Message-ID: <1992Mar13.164202.12109@uunet.uu.net>
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
>Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1992 16:42:02 GMT
Approved: tale@uunet.uu.net
The result is in for the group soc.culture.native.american and by a
margin of 1 vote the group has passed. There will be a period of about 5
days so that all of the news admins can receive this posting, and then
the newgroup message will be sent by David Lawrence, unless he has some
problems with any part of the process. The original charter fro the RFD
has been included below for those people who might not be familiar with
this group, as well as the complete ACK broken down by the no's and the
yes's.
Name: soc.culture.native.american
Charter:
This newgroup is for discussions regarding the culture, life,
and general state of things that pertain to the decendants of people
living on the North and South American continents before the coming
of Columbus and the Europeans. This group of people has been refered
to over the years by many different names such as Indian, American
Indian, Alaskan Native, almost countless tribal names, and most
recently by the term Native American.
NO votes: 40
YES votes: 141
-----
More notes from NativeNet facilitator, Gary Trujillo:
OK folks - a few more thoughts from your friendly facilitator. One thing
you should know is that, in order to be created, a Usenet newsgroup must
be approved by at least 2/3 of the valid votes, AND there must be at least
one hundred yes votes, AND the number of yes votes must exceed the number
of no votes by at least one hundred. However, there is a five day waiting
period, during which the results of the vote can be challenged - so we won't
know for a few more days whether the newsgroup will really come into exist-
ence. With this narrow a margin of approval, it won't take much of a chal-
lenge to put the newsgroup into jeopardy.
So, assuming that soc.culture.native.american does get created:
As indicated in the article I send out to all new members of the NATIVE-L
mailing list, the purpose of that list is to focus attention on the situ-
ation of indigenous people worldwide, not just within the territorial
confines of any one country. I know there are many NativeNet members who
feel they are primarily interested in talking about and sharing informa-
tion about the people of one region. Much of this interest centers on
the indigenous people of North America. Some have asked in an almost
pleading manner - "Isn't there some way I can avoid getting information
on issues pertaining to rainforest peoples, or the aboriginal people of
Australia, or some other part of the world??" For these people, perhaps
"scna" is the answer.
The problem is access. This newsgroup will be available on most, if not
all, systems running the UNIX operating system which carry Usenet news
(and some VMS systems also). I hope to solve the access problem for those
who do not have direct access to Usenet by providing a mailing list in
parallel, as well as a mailing address. (The University of California at
Berkeley also provides this service for mainstream newsgroups, so you'll
be able to post to scna through "ucbvax" as well as via gnosys.)
I'll leave you with this last thought - and save the rest of my thoughts
until after we're sure the vote is secure and the group has been created...
I can see this new newsgroup as having a fairly different character than
what we've become used to on the NativeNet mailing lists. I expect it
will be a forum where very strong opinions are stated, and there will be
much back-and-forth debating about various subjects, with a great deal of
included text from previous articles, in the style of typical Usenet dis-
cussions. Some of what will be posted will be cogent and well thought-out,
and some will seem very random and rambling by comparison. I make no judge-
ment about this character - and I could be proven wrong about it anyway.
The main point I want to make very clear is that one of the real advantages
of this new newsgroup in my view is that it represents a resource for those
NativeNet members who want to be able to focus on North American issues to
the exclusion of the international scene, even if the discussion may seem
unfocussed in other ways. Some may decide the new forum meets their own
needs well enough that they decide to stop receiving NATIVE-L. Those folks
will, of course, go with my best wishes.
NativeNet will continue to carry material relating to Native North American
people (in the sense of being indigenous to the continent before the arrival
of the European settlers), and there will continue to be a lot of material
on that subject, which is as I feel it should be. The NativeNet project, in
fact, will be supporting work on a number of projects that have these same
people as their prime focus (drop me a note if you're interested in knowing
more about these projects).
**HOWEVER** (now we come to the important part)...
After thinking about the subject long and hard, it is my current position
that I, as moderator of the NativeNet mailing lists (NATIVE-L, NAT-1492,
native.lang, and native.edu) WILL NOT PERMIT copying of articles from the
Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.native.american into any of these NativeNet
mailing lists, and will do my best to frustrate copying of articles from
those lists into scna. The reason for this policy is that I want to do my
best to avoid duplication of content for those people who decide they would
like to subscribe to both services. Maybe I'll change my mind later, after
we see how things work out, but for now, I will go on the basis of a certain
instinct that tells me that one of the great keys to what I judge to be the
great success of NativeNet is that we have managed to keep the quality of
articles fairly high and non-repetitive (some might disagree - but our up-
coming survey will provide more information on the level of satisfaction,
among other things). I have no objection to people in either forum referring
to articles in the other one, or even copying segments of articles, but I
feel that we could easily have a great disaster on our electronic hands if
we permit copying of articles verbatim back and forth between the two, which
is one reason why I want to make it easy for people without Usenet access to
get to the new newsgroup. There will be no reason for copying to a Native-
Net list, since people will have mailing list access to scna, and there will
be no reason for copying to scna - even for people who are not on the list
from which the article has been copied, since everyone (EVERYONE with an
email address - which you have to have to even be reading these words, un-
less someone has printed them on a piece of paper for you) will have access
to the mailing list archives via LISTSERV (at least in the case of NATIVE-L
and NAT-1492; maybe archives will be created for native.lang and native.edu
at a later date).
Well, that's enough verbiage for now. I'll let you all know if and when
the new newsgroup actually comes into being, and may have a few more thoughts
to offer at that time.
Thanks again to all those who voted!
Gary