From: yowie9644@yahoo.com.au 
  
 "Noreen Cooper"  wrote in message 
 news:bkl03b$46q4k$1@hades.csu.net... 
 > Cat Protector  wrote: 
 > 
 > : It seems from the description that this group might end up encouraging 
 > : people from adopting from breeders instead of the already full shelters. 
 The 
 > : purebred fancy might have grown but I feel that cats found in shelters 
 are 
 > : just as good as the purebreeds. In fact sometimes you see purebreds end 
 up 
 > : in the shelters. This newsgroup could be a bad idea here. 
 > 
 > Okay, I'll like to address a theoretical question to the news.groupies 
 > here.  Say, you have 150 people who are tired of being berated on the 
 > regular rec.pets.cats* newsgroups for owing a purebred and they want their 
 > own space.  What happens if 50 militant rescue people decide to vote NO 
 > for the reason stated above, that the new group may make adoption from 
 > breeders more attractive.  Their NO votes have nothing to do with whether 
 > enough people want their own group or not.  It's a Catch-22 I saw from the 
 > outset and I'm not sure how anyone can get around it. 
  
 It means you'll have to find more people to get the "yes" vote from. 
  
 Group formation is often political in nature, "no" votes come in for any 
 number of different reasons, the cat breeder / cat rescuer schism is no 
 different from any other political schism in a larger group. If you keep 
 reading news.groups you'll see that any group that is moderated will get 
 "no" votes simply because its moderated - those people who vote "no" feel 
 strongly that there shouldn't be any moderation whatsoever on Usenet and 
 will always vote "no" for a moderated group, no matter what else it may be 
 about. You'll also get a few no votes from people who simply don't believe 
 the Big 8 needs any more groups. And then there are the "controversal" 
 groups that will attract quite a few no votes simply because of the nature 
 of the controversy (imagine trying to get sci.esp passed for example). The 
 person or persons trying to get the group formed need to take this into 
 account when they are working out the numbers. Assume that there will always 
 be at least 50 no votes. If the proposed group can't win the vote count with 
 that many "no" votes, then its probably not worth persuing the group any 
 further until some more positive interest develeloped. 
  
 While I myself am sympathetic to the formation of the group, I haven't seen 
 much evidence in the RFD discussion so far that anyone will actually want to 
 post to rpc.breeds. And while I don't subscribe to all of the rec.pets.cats 
 heirachy, there has been virtually no discussion about the formation of a 
 breeder group in the ones I do read. I am also unaware of any mailing list 
 for breeders, although I admit I have not really gone out looking as I am 
 not a breeder. My vote is now wavering - while I can see why breeders want a 
 spot in cyberspace that is not full of abuse from the anti-breeder brigade, 
 I'm unconvinced of the need of another group in the rpc heirachy if its 
 going to be exceedingly low traffic (as is currently suggested by the 
 discussions I've seen here). As information about different breeds is 
 already out there on the 'net (and indeed, the FAQs for many are posted in 
 rpc.announce, even if it is a 'bot posting them), I am sceptical as to the 
 purpose of the group. Sure, there are people out there who breed cats and 
 would like to discuss *breeding* with other breeders (rather than the breeds 
 themselves), but who are they and are they likely to post to Usenet? 
  
 In other words, do we need another NG when there doens't seem to be too much 
 evidence of people likely to post to it? 
  
 Yowie 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)