roy at alanine.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes:
>> You are a bit late in piping up. Unfortunately when the opportunity
>> was announced for discussion on this newsgroup, no one said anything.
>> Discussion ended almost a month ago and voting is also just about over
>> (Sunday the 23rd).
>Maybe I've just been being oblivious, but this is the first I've ever heard
>about it. Personally, if I opened a topic for discussion and no one said
>anything, I would assume that either 1) the word never got out or 2) nobody
>was interested.
I have sent out other RFD's previously; some generated discussion and
some did not. There is no reason to believe that anything is wrong
with the bionet.ANNOUNCE distribution (if you were looking for RFD's
here in bionet.general, you will never see *any*). If no one reacts
to an RFD, it is not an automatic veto of the group. This has
happened with other groups too, not just on bionette. Voting occurs
during the voting period, not during the discussion period.
My bet is that summer vacations/travel are probably making people
devote less attention to news than usual. Everything was done by the
book on this one, and there is no reason to change anything in this
vote.
To make an analogy regarding this proposed group, several people
including myself wrote a letter to Science last year describing all of
the free network services available to biologists. Science turned it
down with the feeble excuse that "everyone already knows about these
things." I felt, "If so, why did we, the people closest to the issue,
feel the need to write the letter???!!!" I humbly submit that if
women scientists feel the need for a group like bionette, then I can't
take quite seriously statements from men that women are already equal.
Sincerely,
Dave Kristofferson
GenBank Manager
kristoff at genbank.bio.net
