Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ptsfa!ames!ucbcad!zen!trinity!max From: max@trinity.uucp (Max Hauser) Newsgroups: rec.birds Subject: Re: rec.nature.birds? Summary: New group, not name change Message-ID: <5281@zen.berkeley.edu> Date: 10 Dec 87 09:07:07 GMT References: <19021@bbn.COM> <7055@sunybcs.UUCP> Sender: news@zen.berkeley.edu Reply-To: max@eros.UUCP (Max Hauser) Organization: UC Berkeley Lines: 25 In article <7055@sunybcs.UUCP> dmark@joey.UUCP (David Mark) writes: >> [rec.nature.birds] seems reasonable to me. ... If I may humbly inject a civil comment, since this topic is under active discussion, it seems obvious to me that the proposal should correctly be for a NEW group rather than a name change. Birds in nature are only one of the subtopics of birds, and practice has established without doubt that other subtopics too are discussed on rec.birds. Even the existence of controversy establishes that. Since there are more topics on rec.birds than just birds-in-nature, please do not presume to change the name to reflect only one of the subtopics. If you do, it will be necessary for the rest of us to re-create rec.birds to (explicitly, for a change) serve the broader interest (as it has been doing _de facto_ for some years). In any event, many have already lamented that birdwatching alone does not provide anough traffic for a satisfactory group. I suggest as an obvious alternative the creation of a new group about general wildlife. That will have a larger volume than "rec.nature.birds," as many have pointed out (and asked for); will combine diverse wildlife interests not currently served at all; and will leave non-wildlife bird matters in rec.birds where they are now, so as not to annoy wildlife-only enthusiasts.