Therefore, it would be good if you could read, and possibly save this
article to refer to when that time comes.
Thanks.
In <1992Dec18.033625.19929@gnosys.svle.ma.us> I wrote:
> I need help thinking through an appropriate response to a recent proposal
> to create a "newsgroup" on the worldwide Usenet conferencing system which
> would exist for the purpose of exchanging information and ideas about the
> indigenous peoples of the Americas and possibly of the world. I feel that
> this development could be very important for us as a community...
Thanks to those of you who have already responded to my call, and who have
asked to be placed onto one of the special-purpose mailing lists I have
created to deal with this issue (see the original article for details).
I order for us to act effectively, however, in support of this new Usenet
newsgroup proposal, it will be necessary for more people to be involved,
whether or not those people take part in the mailing list exchanges. I
have not yet put together the "technical addendum" article that I am plan-
ning to post to give more details on how the link-up would work. I feel
it is more important for the present that I say a bit more in simple
language what is involved here, why I feel this is such an important
development, and how you can help.
One very important aspect of having one or more new Usenet newsgroups with
the subject matter announced lies in the fact that it could make possible
an easy mechanism for linking up with a large number of people who would
not otherwise likely be involved in the NativeNet enterprise. Having these
newsgroups would enable a bidirectional linkup with people in the Usenet
community, so that lists like NATIVE-L and NATCHAT could be made available
to Usenet readers, and mailing list members could have the benefit of the
perspective and information which could be provided by these new members
of our ever-growing family.
I'm sorry to make this appeal just before the holidays, and realize that
for some, this message will not be read until some time in January, along
with a mass of other electronic mail that has accumulated in your mailbox.
For those reading it sooner, I hope you will at least make a mental note
to yourself, if you don't have time to deal with the matter now, but feel
you might have the interest, and that you will give the matter some thought
and perhaps help a bit when you return to your computer.
The main thing I'd like to do in this article is to describe how you can
help the effort. But first, I thought a bit more background might help
establish why the effort itself is important...
Usenet has become a very widespread vehicle for people, mostly students
at universities, to exchange information and points of view on a variety
of subjects. It is a fairly efficient system, and is felt by its users
to be far preferable to using mailing lists for similar purposes, since
it does not require one to take special action to "subscribe" to a dis-
cussion or information exchange, and one is not bombarded by numerous
messages landing in her or his mailbox which must be disposed of one by
one, which is necessary in the case of mailing lists such as this one.
(Those reading this article via IGC or one of the APC systems [PeaceNet/
EcoNet], GreenNet, Web, Pegasus, etc.] are exempt from this observation,
since the conferencing system at your site provides you the essential
features of a Usenet newsreader.) Usenet is also more efficient than
mailing lists from the point of view of the system resources it consumes,
since only a single copy of a given article needs to be delivered to
each computer in the network, rather than a personal copy having to be
sent to each "subscriber," and articles need not be broadcast from a
central site. Each computer in the network is capable of transmitting
an article to the news systems on the rest of the network. As the news
software on each computer in the network receives an article, it will
re-queue the article for transmission to one or more "net-neighbor"
sites, which will, in turn, pass it on to their neighbor sites, so that
an article will, within a matter of a day or two, propagate throughout
the network.
If you are on a UNIX system, it is quite possible that you have Usenet
news installed (there are also implementations of Usenet software on
non-UNIX systems). To find out, you can consult your systems support
staff, or just try the commands rn, trn, nn, readnews, vnews, vn and tin,
which are all popular news-reading programs. (My own personal favorites
are nn and trn.) If you get that far, you might check for the "alt.native"
newsgroup, which carries the same material as our own NATCHAT list. In
fact, I'm thinking of feeding NATIVE-L out to alt.native for a trial period
as a demonstration of how a mainstream hookup between NativeNet and Usenet
could work, as well as a test of how hard it would be to channel two dis-
tinct mailing lists to a single Usenet newsgroup, in case the upcoming vote
approves only one of the two newsgroups I would like to see created.
The main need at the present time is for people who could help think
through some of the issues being wrestled with by those Usenet users who
are attempting to determine an appropriate name for the new newsgroup(s)
which might be established, and the subject matter and scope of each, and
how the charter(s) might best be worded. What is clear so far is that, if
we can succeed in getting one or more new newsgroups set up, they will
exist in the "'soc.culture' hierarchy," which is generally the home of any
newsgroup dealing with the culture of a particular country or ethnic group.
(Each component in the name of a Usenet newsgroup represents one level in
a hierarchy. In this case, "soc" refers to "social.") So far, the dis-
cussion being carried on in the "news.groups" newsgroup about the name of
the new newsgroup(s) has gotten as far as producing what appears to be a
rough consensus that the name should involve either the word "native,"
"indigenous," or "aboriginal." The name suggested originally was
"soc.culture.native-american," since the request came from an American
Indian person. However, he quickly conceded that "soc.culture.native.
american" (a "." rather than a "-" in the name) would do as well for his
purposes, which makes a big difference in Usenet-land, since it estab-
lishes the ".native" name as representative of a new level in the hier-
archy "soc.culture," while "native-american" would be just the name of
a single newsgroup, with no possibilities for building on part of the
name to establish related newsgroups for topics relating to the indigenous
peoples of other regions of the world. If "soc.culture.native.american"
were to be established, "soc.culture.native" would become a newsgroup
hierarchy in its own right. "Soc.culture.native.american," would then
become a single member of that hierarchy, alongside others, which could be
for other regions of the world where indigenous populations still live in
distinguishable communities. (Thus, one could imagine a "soc.culture.
native.australian" newsgroup for example.)
Another possibility, one I favor, is to start by creating simply a news-
group called "soc.culture.native," which could itself serve as a forum
for exchanges concerning the indigenous populations of the world, rather
than being limited to one geographical region, such as the Americas. If
this name were adopted (or "soc.culture.indigenous" or "soc.culture.abo-
riginal"), it could later be differentiated into geographic areas, if
there were to be sufficient interest in doing so. (Actually, my first
choice would be to create a "soc.culture.native" AND a "soc.culture.na-
tive.d" newsgroup, the latter being for discussion. Handling things in
this fashion would enable a simple and natural link between NATIVE-L and
soc.culture.native and between NATCHAT and soc.culture.d.)
The world of Usenet is a culture unto itself - and a somewhat strange one
at that. Many of the people who "hang out" there are very technically
oriented, and very logical (if a tad overly-literal) in their thinking.
However, to the extent that computers are used more widely within the
university community for non-technical subjects and that Usenet is used
by more people in the social sciences and the arts, this situation is
changing. The reason I mention this subject is to note that the dis-
cussion to date in the "news.groups" newsgroup about the creation of one
or more newsgroups for the aforementioned purposes has been dominated by
people whose primary concern is what is referred to as "Usenet namespace,"
by which it is meant the conventions for naming newsgroups. These people
act as self-appointed critics of new proposals which appear not to conform
to the existing conventions for naming newsgroups. In fact, the conven-
tions themselves are evolving. Usenet itself is more of a deliberate
anarchy than anything that can properly said to be planned, but it is
important that the anarchy be somewhat organized, which is why there is
general consent for this process. There is a published set of guidelines
for the creation of new newsgroups which requires a discussion period
following a formal "request for discussion" (RFD), followed by a thirty
day period of discussion which takes place in news.groups. At that time,
a "call for votes" (CFD) is issued if a general consensus has been reached
concerning a name and a charter for the newsgroup and a few other details.
Since the RFD was issued on or about 10 December, the end of the discus-
sion period is due to end on about the 10th of January. I say "about"
since some extension may be granted due to the intervening holiday period.
There is currently a "straw poll" being conducted, based on a set of
questions about a newsgroup name. Unfortunately, the questions do not
really distinguish among the several issues that need to be decided before
a vote can be issued, that go considerably beyond the name of a new news-
group:
1. Should the newsgroup(s) deal only with topics concerning
the indigenous peoples of the Americas, or with those of
the indigenous peoples of all parts of the world?
2. Which of the names "native," "indigenous," or "aboriginal"
is most appropriate if it is decided to establish a new
sub-hierarchy under "soc.culture?"
3. Is there support for the creation of two newsgroups initially,
one for the exchange of information and one for discussion,
which would parallel and be linked with the NATIVE-L and
NATCHAT mailing lists, respectively?
4. Should an informational newsgroup be called something like
"soc.culture.native" or "soc.culture.native.info?" (This
difference could be an important one, even if would be hard
to explain in a few words here.)
I am hoping that there will be time to conduct a second round of straw
polling before the discussion period expires which would pose these
questions to the potential voters, and thus give us some idea of which
actual names would be most likely to succeed.
Here's where you come in!
I feel that the present discussion in the Usenet news.groups newsgroup is
taking place in something of a vacuum, in the sense that the people talking
about the issue are really concerned almost exclusively with preserving the
sense of order already achieved with "Usenet namespace." They are rather
less concerned with the issues of content, and how useful given newsgroups
might turn out to be (or rather I should say that, lacking content expertise,
they really have no solid basis for evaluating such questions). There have
been some fairly fanciful suggestions advanced during the past couple of weeks
about newsgroup names and/or ways to structure a new newsgroup hierarchy.
I hope that the NativeNet community would be willing to become involved in
this discussion in some form, so as to lend some balance based on a greater
knowledge of and concern about the subject matter than the keepers of the
"Usenet namespace" can bring to bear on the subject by themselves. This
discussion, and whatever decisions get made based on it, appear to me to be
very critical for NativeNet itself, since it offers a promise of enriching
and enlarging our own community, and perhaps in enabling at least some of
our present membership to move from the mailing list to Usenet, which can
provide a better experience due to the superior user-interface of Usenet
news when compared with conventional electronic mail systems.
One form of involvement can be achieved by taking me up on the offer I made
in the original article on this subject, and by joining one of the "nn.usenet"
or "nn.usenet.all" mailing lists (the difference between the two being that I
will selectively feed articles which may be edited a bit to reduce redundancy
to members of the first list, whereas the second list will be unabridged - a
complete selection of the discussion taking place in news.groups. Members of
both lists will be able to participate in the dialogue by means of a special
address which I will announce once the lists have been set up. (That is, any
message you send to that address will go to everyone else on the nn.usenet /
nn.usenet.all lists, and will be injected into the Usenet news stream for
transport to news.groups, so your voice will be heard in that discussion.)
Please note that this task is very limited in its duration by the fact that
the time period allowed for discussion will soon expire, so please do not be
concerned that an ongoing commitment will be required.
The second form of involvement is as a behind-the-scenes consultant, who
might be able to offer advice or counsel to those of us on the front lines,
suggesting proposals we might make or strategy we might employ so as to have
a good chance of coming up with a situation that benefits everyone as much
as possible. If you are interested in this role, please send me a note, and
I will respond with a message containing details of how you can serve in this
capacity.
But in any case, your vote will be important. I will make an announcement
when the next straw poll is up for a vote (the present one ends today, the
21st of December), and pass on the exact text of that ballot, and I'll give
details on how you can submit your vote. I will also transmit the "call-
for-votes" (CFV) announcement when it is published and will explain how you
can submit your vote for that measure as well.
Thanks very much for reading this article, and for whatever you can do in
the upcoming weeks to help create this important bridge to an important
community of computer-using people concerned with the same things we are.
Best wishes of the season to all!
Gary
--
Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst