META: Is It Time To Combine Newsgroups

Let me just start out by stating I understand why posting offtopic is just wrong (although I've done so often enough). I really don't want to address that here. What I'd like to discuss is whether it would make sense to combine RACMU and RACMX. I've only been lurking here since 1997, so I was not around for the original vote. From what I understand RACMX predated RACMU which is kinda weird. Could someone who was around back then enlighten me on a few items:

1) Where did Marvel Universe discussion take place before RACMU was created?

2) Was there any discussion at the time of the creation of RACMX about just making it RACMU ? If so what were the objections?

3) Has there ever been a previous vote to incorporate one group into the other?

My personal feeling is that they should be combined. I mean it's a shared universe. There are references to the X-Characters in a large portion of the monthly 'Marvel Universe' titles. There are relational ties (Magneto/Scarlet Witch) character swapping (Binary/Warbird, Beast, Firestar) combined teams (Excalibur, Champions, New Defenders) and shared limited series (Secret Wars, Infinity Whatever, The End). This ghettoization of Comic characters and titles on usenet just doesn't seem like the best thing to me. What is the opposing view? I see a lot of the same posters in both groups.

There are some that'll say that it's been this way this long why change it? I deal with this traditionalist point of view at my church all the time? And I don't feel it's a sufficient arguement in itself. I mean why not make a change if there is a reasonable chance that more discussion of content can take place and less negativity and confusion?

Then there are thosen who'll say. Certain posters either only wish to discuss the X-Men or hate the X-men with such a passion they would never even read an X-Men thread much less participate in one. To these I respond: C'mon, is there a sufficient amount of these people to keep the two groups apart?

My guess is this group was much larger in the past, but has dwindled to a small minority at this time. Is there some other valid arguement I'm missing? If it's a matter of it being too much work to call a vote I would gladly volunteer. I'm sure it's nothing my secretary couldn't handle. I'd just like to know before hand if it'd be worth the effort.

RAC I think

Yes about a year or so ago it was voted and passed that other-media should be abandoned and discussion should occur in the appropriate NG.

I've added rac.marvel.xbooks to this, since it also concerns that group. Thus, I'm also including most, if not all, of the original text so they can see what's up.

In the beginning, there was net.comics. In 1986, there was the Usenet Great Renaming, which created the Big 7 hierarchies of rec., talk, sci., misc., news., soc., and comp. (note: no, alt. is not part of this. That's another, somewhat long story that's irrelevant to the matter at hand). net.comics got renamed to rec.arts.comics at that point, and was where all comics related posts went.

In 1991, rec.arts.comics.marketplace was created, to move for sale and wanted posts out of rec.arts.comics.

In 1992, rec.arts.comics.strips was created, for discussion of comic strips.

Later in 1992, a vote was taken to 1) Rename rec.arts.comics to rec.arts.comics.misc 2) Create rec.arts.comics.info, a moderated group 3) Create rec.arts.comics.superhero 4) Create rec.arts.comics.xbooks

1, 2, and 4 passed (although I'd forgotten just how close the .misc vote was; 193 to 92, only exceeding the needed 100 vote margin by 1 and coming in at 67.71%). rac.superhero failed by 148-123 (it needed both 66% yes and 100 more yes than no votes, so it failed despite getting a majority).

In 1994, rac.creative passed, and in early 1995, rac.alternative passed.

In 1995, rec.arts.comics.dc.universe, rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe, rac.elfquest, and rac.other-media all passed, followed a few months later by rac.xbooks being renamed to rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks and rac.dc.lsh and rac.dc.vertigo being created. The lag was due to various rules about time between votes and wanting to insure that group names were correct (again, long story that's irrelevant).

Other votes have been done over the years; rac.other-media passed on its second try, as did rac.creative.

Don't recall, but at the time there was 1) a *lot* of xbooks traffic relative to anything else and 2) a fair number of people who didn't want to read/post about the xbooks.

Yep. rac.alternative and rac.other-media were folded back into other r.a.c. groups last year.

The catch is that it's not just work, but that you should have an idea of how the group creation process in news.groups works. The old line used to be 'If you want to create/remove a newsgroup, read news.groups for six months. If you think this doesn't apply to you, read it for twelve months'. Given the stabilization of the process and the lack of new proposals in news.groups of late, it's probably not that severe. Still, you probably want to hook up with someone who understands the process before starting. I'd also suggest holding a straw poll in both rac.mu and rac.mx if this thread indicates interest to see if it looks like you'd have the 2/3rds majority and turnout needed.

Rec.arts.comics.misc. At that point there was already a group called rec.arts.comics.xbooks. When the rac.marvel.* heirarchy was created, that group was renamed rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks in order to fit within the new structure.

One of the big questions around newsgroup creation is that of traffic. I find the current rac.mu manageable; I'd be concerned if racm.xbooks was folded back in, because then traffic would be hard for me to keep up with.

That's not an argument against doing anything. I'm just trying to illustrate the kind of reasoning some people use, and the kind of reactions you'll need to address.