From: jimrtex@pipeline.com 
  
 On 10 Jul 2003 12:16:37 -0700, nigel@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Nigel 
 Perry) wrote: 
  
 >Jim Riley  wrote in message news:... 
  
 >> If you mean that "std" will somehow magically ward off discussion of 
 >> the language, I don't think that it will.  That is the basis of my 
 >> whole argument. 
 > 
 >There are a number of other succesful fora where questions on language 
 >usage are asked and answered. Why would there really be a mass exodus 
 >of people from a working Q&A forum to a new one for the Standard so 
 >they can ask their "what's wrong with my for loop" question there? 
  
 This presumes that participation in such forums is static.  The people 
 asking "what's wrong with my for loop" question are unlikely to have 
 subscribed to the group for the past seven years, but were looking for 
 a group to ask a question. 
  
 If you simply want to ask a question, subscribing to a mailing list is 
 a lot of work.  Regular participants in a mailing list may become 
 annoyed if this type of question is repetitive. 
  
 People who prefer newsgroups may not know about the microsoft.* group, 
 or may not like microsoft.* groups for any number of reasons (e.g. 
 harder to access, tons of HTML-bloat, antipathy towards Microsoft, 
 different culture). 
  
 You are providing a solution for those people who either did not find 
 the other forums, or did not like using them.  It really does not 
 matter that you didn't intend to provide a place for this discussion 
 or that you believed that everyone interested in discussing c# would 
 have found the alternative forums. 
  
 >Sure some language type questions will appear in a comp.std group, but 
 >will it really be of problematic proportions? 
  
 Are you satisfied with the nature of comp.std.c and comp.std.c++? 
  
 Isn't the most realistic expectation be that comp.std.csharp will be 
 "like comp.std.c and comp.std.c++ but for c#"? 
  
 >                                              I expect not. This group 
 >has been proposed in response to a request for a Standards forum from 
 >people who haven't found such in the existing fora. 
  
 What was the specific request?  Maybe the proposed solution (this RFD) 
 does not satisfy the request. 
  
 >> Standardization of c# is one aspect of the language, and would be best 
 >> served by containing all the discussion in a single group, or creating 
 >> adjacent subgroups so that the relationship is more obvious. 
 > 
 >Maybe a comp.lang would have been a good idea, and might yet be. 
 >However the existing fora are up, running, and working well. Would 
 >they migrate to a comp.lang? 
  
 There are many more users of c# than there are implementors or 
 standard-writers.  Is it realistic that users who might have some 
 interest in standards will also use a group in an arena that is 
 foreign to them?  Aren't you really arguing that these users prefer 
 mailing lists or the microsoft.* group, but will switch over to the 
 Big 8 for this type of discussion? 
  
 -- 
 Jim Riley 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)