Re: CFV: sci.philosophy.natural moderated

Dick Wisan (wisanr@hartwick.edu)
28 Nov 95 16:07:55 -0500

In article <49eav8$h96@news.computek.net>,
Will Wagers <wagers@computek.net> writes:

> Dear Dick,
>
> This group is moderated - there will be no "kooks", as you call
> them, will be posting to it, and, they will certainly not be making
> it their own.
>
> Sincerely
>
> will wagers@computek.net

Good. But what that does is shoot down one of my hypotheses about the
reason for the strange name. It leaves me with only the hypothesis
that it's meant to invite scientists who would be disinclined to ex-
plore a group named "sci.ancient" or "sci.history.ancient" but who
would not be deflected from "philosophy.natural". Seriously, I don't
yet understand what the objection to these names is.

On a different point, from some of your (or someone's) posts, I gether
there's been a certain amount of discussion of the name in email, and
from the header of some of the posts, I gather that there's been
discussion in a lot of groups I don't keep an eye on. I do follow
news.groups, which is the place where the discussion is supposed to
be, but there hasn't been much.

With my eye on news.groups, I saw only a few comments on the proposal
and almost nothing defending the name against the specific objections.
In fact, the discussion was so desultory that I supposed, for a while,
that the proposal had been dropped. Perhaps this explains why it seems
appropriate to some of us to carry on with objections, while you feel
the matter's been dealt with and that it's unfair to be doing all this
after the CFV.

Usually, by time a CFV appears, we have the feeling that the issues have
been threshed out, and we at least understand why the others won't change
their minds. I was surprised, in this case, to find that a CFV had been
issued, because it appeared that nothing had been said about the specific
objections raised.

I don't like to be in this position, having to vote no on a group I'd be
interested in, on the grounds that it's going to be (in my view) mis-
abelled. 

-- 

R. N. (Dick) Wisan  - Email: internet WISANR@hartwick.edu

                    - Snail: 37 Clinton Street, Oneonta NY 13820, U.S.A.

                    - Just your opinion, please, ma'am: No fax.