huff at mcclb0.med.nyu.edu (Edward J. Huff) writes:
>I think that there is no way to avoid the fact that it is impossible
>to rename a newsgroup. Physically. You can't get it to happen everywhere
>at the same time. Furthermore, there is NO mechanism at all to automatically
>change the .newsrc files belonging to the readers.
You are correct that technically we would have to kill
bionet.molbio.gene-org and create bionet.molbio.gdb instead of
"renaming" gene-org, but the purpose of voting is to demonstrate that
there is interest in the *concept* of the newsgroup that is being
proposed. There are already 82 people on the e-mail distribution for
gene-org at GenBank and probably *at least* that number at Daresbury
now that the IRLEARN lists have also been added there. This also does
not count those who read the newsgroup on USENET. One might argue
that support for the concept has already been demonstrated.
Perhaps I should rephrase my appeal. The question that I put out for
discussion is whether or not people think that the proposed GDB group
differs sufficiently from GENOMIC-ORGANIZATION to warrant a vote. It
is not that much work to hold a vote from my standpoint; the main
issue is that it will delay the start-up of a newsgroup for GDB by 40
days (and 40 nights 8-) which seems like a bit of a waste. However,
if we want to live strictly by the rules ... (which we can't really do
since changing the names of existing groups was not discussed).
Sincerely,
Dave Kristofferson
GenBank Manager
kristoff at genbank.bio.net
