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From: webber@brandx.rutgers.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.flame
Subject: Re: I would like to change the name of this group
Message-ID: <647@brandx.rutgers.edu>
Date: Fri, 4-Dec-87 01:36:50 EST
Article-I.D.: brandx.647
Posted: Fri Dec  4 01:36:50 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 8-Dec-87 06:17:40 EST
References: <165@bacchus.DEC.COM>
Followup-To: alt.flame
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 48
Summary: should have been in alt.flame
To: reid@decwrl.dec.dom, webber@athos.rutgers.edu

In article <165@bacchus.DEC.COM>, reid@decwrl.dec.com (Brian Reid) writes:
> Before this newsgroup gets too many readers, I propose to change its name
> from "alt.aquaria" to "alt.aquarium". 

According to your statistics of the 2nd of Dec, this group already has
a thousand readers to be inconvenienced.  Since aquaria is simply the
plural of aquarium, it is hard to imagine why you think the difference
is important enough to warrant a name-change weeks after the creation
(at least the china/chinese silliness arose immediately).  There are
clearly many news groups with names that are the plural form of nouns.

Since there are many possible names for any given group and yet a
group can only have one name, it would seem that there is little to be
gained by wasting time talking about which one is ``optimal.''  If it
is personally annoying to you and you understand the structure of the
inews code, it would be a relatively trivial matter to establish a
synonym group or local gateway.  For people with less technical
background, I suppose a real fanatic could try and create a second
group called alt.aquarium.  However, if you want to establish a policy
of people randomly deleting groups created by other people (which is
what ``renaming'' means) on alt.*, there is, of course, little I can
do to stop you (perhaps on April 1st we should simply delete all the
groups except news.groups and alt.config each year and start over).

>                                  I'm sure that none of us has ever
> uttered the word "aquaria" out loud until this newsgroup came along. 

Well -- first: you are wrong (I personally have used the word prior to
1987 (and even own a book that uses it in the title)); and second:
until more of us have terminals that accept voice input, there would
seem to be little reason for stressing spoken vocabulary.

If you want to appeal to the standard of being within typical spoken
vocabularly, then perhaps you should start with renaming ``gourmand''
with its synonym ``glutton.''

>                                     If we do it quickly then there won't
> be a lot of people affected.

Hmmm.  Wasn't that the way we got into Vietnam?

------ BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)

P.S., since this discusion has exceptionally little to do with the
maintenance of aquaria, I have redirected the followup into alt.flame,
which was created for just this sort of silliness (I will leave it to
the regulars of that group to determine if it is more like astrology,
creationism, or platygaenism).