This message will appear in news.groups and bionet.general immediately,
and in the moderated comp.ai.vision next week at the earliest (since I am
posting it separately, not crossposting). All people who follow up to this,
please separately mail your posting to Vision-List at ADS.COM. If you post
it to comp.ai.vision, it will not appear in any unmoderated groups until
after the moderator receives it.
The following editorial comment appeared in comp.ai.vision, a newsgroup /
mailing list moderated by Phil Kahn <Vision-List-Request at ADS.COM>, in
VISION-LIST Digest Mon Jun 08 14:20:03 PDT 92 Volume 11 : Issue 21.
>Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 15:46:50 -0400
>From: John Stanley <stanley at oce.orst.edu>
>Subject: CFV: sci.image.processing
>Organization: oce.orst.edu
>Followup-To: poster
>>[ As I have noted earlier, I do not advocate you vote against this: its
> charter and subject matter is contained within the scope of the
> Vision List (comp.ai.vision). It will serve to divide our readership.
> To vote against this group, mail to mail-server at pit-manager.mit.edu> with the subject "vote sci.image.processing no".
> phil... ]
>>NAME: sci.image.processing
(the rest of the CFV followed).
(I guess most people will read this as "I advocate you vote against this",
given the context. I could not find the earlier discussion.)
I do not dispute Phil's right to add this comment. He is not the vote
taker. As moderator of comp.ai.vision, he can say whatever he wants.
I do not even believe that he should not have made the comment. People
who believe he should not have, please follow up to alt.flame. HE IS
NOT THE VOTE TAKER. Discussing this red herring will detract from the
issue at hand.
This appeared in a separate posting in bionet.announce:
>The Vision List Archives provide imagery and shareware for image
>processing in addition to computer vision. It is very difficult to
>separate vision from image processing and calibration topics since they
>are all interrelated. There has not been excessive traffic or noise
>on the Vision List that usually justifies carving out of subtopics into
>new Lists.
>>The Vision List has been around over 10 years, and its large and
>international readership is indicative of its usefulness to a wide
>community.
>>The original poster did not seem aware of comp.ai.vision (the Vision List).
>I would like to know why they do not believe that the Vision List is
>serving their prospective readership.
1. It is a moderated group/mailing list.
2. It is a MODERATED group/mailing list.
3. It does not have FAQ postings.
4. It is not about scientific images.
5. It is not about image detectors that don't work like eyes.
6. It is not about image systems that do things that eyes can't do.
7. It is about VISION and ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Regardless of the
charter, the newsgroup name determines what people will post and
who will read. We want a newsgroup about SCIENTIFIC IMAGE PROCESSING,
that is processing of scientific images, in ways unrelated to vision.
Clearly, there has been no excessive traffic on comp.ai.vision related
to image processing, because the name of the newsgroup discourages
postings about image processing. Also, the moderated nature of the
group discourages questions for which you need answers in one or two
days.
I do not agree that comp.ai.vision would serve the needs of the scientific
image processing community. To demonstrate why this is so, I would suggest
that the people who support sci.image.processing should start posting
whatever they were planning to post to s.i.p into c.a.v.
For example, I plan to prepare some FAQ files, that will be posted at least
once a month to s.i.p. If s.i.p fails, will Phil be willing to mail these
files out on the Vision-list every month? Should he? Of course not.
c.a.v is a LOW NOISE newsgroup. s.i.p is NOT a low noise newsgroup.
We hope it won't have as high noise as comp.graphics, but it will have
FAQ files posted regularly.
Also, there is the subject matter. Compare the charters.
"The list is intended to embrace discussion on a wide range of vision
topics, including physiological theory, computer vision, machine
vision and image processing algorithms, vision techniques to support
robot navigation and spatial representation, artificial intelligence
and neural network techniques applied to vision, industrial
applications, robotic eyes, implemented systems, ideas, profound
thoughts; anything related to vision and its automation is fair game. "
Image processing is a small part of the topic, and I would read it to
include image processing applied to computer vision, not image processing
in general. The last sentence would seem to rule out applications of
image analysis, where the goal is for example to measure the length
of a microscopic object. The eye does not measure lengths, and such
image analysis is not vision.
The sci.image.processing charter explicitly asks for FAQ postings. It
asks for image analysis, i.e. making scientific measurements using
image equipment. The "image" in that case is not something a human
could see with his eye, and the analysis is not similar to what the
brain does.
How are new users of USENET supposed to find out that comp.ai.vision
is actually the image processing newsgroup? It isn't even listed
in the "List of Active Newsgroups" because it is really a moderated
mailing list. I never saw the charter for the list until it was
posted to bionet.announce during this discussion. In general, charters
for newsgroups and mailing lists are not easy to find. (If someone
knows how to find them easily, I would like to know. Actually,
newsreaders should make them easily available, but my newsreader
does not). The NAME of the newsgroup is what counts in the end,
after the charter becomes inaccessible. comp.ai.vision does not
sound like image processing.
In conclusion, we want an UNMODERATED newsgroup. We want FAQ postings.
We want a newsgroup about scientific images, about measurements that
eyes can never make.
If the traffic that would go to sci.image.processing "really" belongs
in comp.ai.vision, then perhaps we should discuss changing the status
of comp.ai.vision to unmoderated. Or the moderator of comp.ai.vision
could simply include the sci.image.processing traffic in the VISION list
digest.
--
Edward J. Huff huff at mcclb0.med.nyu.edu (212)998-8465
Keck Laboratory for Biomolecular Imaging
NYU Chemistry Deptartment, 31 Washington Place, New York NY 10003
