CFV: comp.std.lisp moderated and comp.org.lisp-users

[jan@bagend.atl.ga.us (Jan Isley)]

                      FIRST CALL FOR VOTES (of 2)

This is the first of two Call For Votes (CFV) regarding the proposed
creation of two new newsgroups.  Please read the proposals before voting.
Detailed instructions for voting are given below.

Unmoderated group: comp.org.lisp-users
Moderated group:   comp.std.lisp (moderated)

Newsgroups lines:
comp.org.lisp-users	Association of Lisp Users related discussions.
comp.std.lisp		User group (ALU) supported standards. (Moderated)

moderator:		Brad Miller <miller@cs.rochester.edu>
submission address:	lisp-standards@cs.rochester.edu

Votes must be received by 23:59:59 GMT, 7 December 1993.

This vote is being conducted by a neutral third party.  All questions
regarding voting and procedure or reports of problems should be mailed
to Jan Isley <jan@bagend.atl.ga.us>.

Votes should be mailed to usenet-votes@mathcs.emory.edu.

All questions regarding the proposed new groups should be mailed to
the proposer, Brad Miller <miller@cs.rochester.edu>.

All questions regarding the comp.org.lisp-users to ALU mailing list
gateway to Charles Fry <chucko@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov>.

The CFV will be sent to the following mailing lists:

allegro-cl@ucbvax.berkeley.edu     alu-board@ai.sri.com
common-lisp@ai.sri.com             slug@ai.sri.com

CHARTERS

comp.org.lisp-users
-------------------
Discussion of general topics relevant to the Association of Lisp Users
(ALU) (including Lisp Vendors), in particular centered on membership
issues, future conferences, publications, and Lisp advocacy issues.
Overlap with comp.lang.lisp.*, and other groups this message is cross-
posted to should be minimal, as this is NOT intended to be a technical,
but an organizational group. The ALU mailing list will be bidirectionally
gatewayed into this newsgroup.

Participation will not be limited to current ALU members.

comp.std.lisp (moderated)
-------------------------
This moderated group is intended to foster focused discussion on
user-group supported standards that are beyond the scope of more
formal standards e.g.  that are not addressed in the (almost final)
ANSI Common Lisp. It will be moderated for appropriateness to the
group and timeliness, and not for technical content; the moderator
will periodically post the status of all ALU standard proposals,
open and close discussions on new standards, and call for specific
technical experts to take charge of each standard (for surveying
existing practice, proposing, incorporating changes, and wording
the final version).  The moderator will be reponsible for recording
all finalized standards for the ALU, assigning identifiers and sub-
mitting copies to all interested vendors. The initial intent is to
give feedback to the several LISP vendors for inter-vendor compatible
support of various features that have developed too late to be included
in the work of ANSI committee X3J13, such as (but not limited to)
DEFSYSTEM, Foreign Function Interface, and Multiprocessing.

Participation will not be limited to current ALU members.

Moderator:           Brad Miller <miller@cs.rochester.edu>
Submission address:  lisp-standards@cs.rochester.edu

RATIONALE

comp.org.lisp-users
-------------------
Although SLUG (Symbolics Lisp Users Group) evolved into the Association
of Lisp Users, the mailing list for SLUG is still used for discussions
related to issues regarding Symbolics products.  As such, it is not the
appropriate vehicle for discussions relevant for the entire membership
of ALU. One of the primary purposes behind the ALU organization is to
promote the use of, and education about LISP-like languages. At the ALU
(open) board meeting at LUV '93, we discussed this and felt that a
newsgroup in the comp.org hierarchy could best help us achieve our goals
of disseminating information about promoting lisp to interested parties,
have a single place for discussing how the ALU can help parties
interested in lisp, and have a useful place for discussion on future
conferences and a possible periodical take place. Furthermore the ALU
does NOT restrict itself to only common-lisp, but all dialects of lisp
like languages.

comp.std.lisp
-------------
At LUV-93 it was clear from the common lisp vendors that they would not
be investing substantial amounts of effort in attempting to make their
products compatible with each-other without some firm guidance and
commitment from their users. We felt that the ALU, by providing a forum
to define such "de facto" standards, could help the user community
better coordinate on cohesive needs, and thus provide a "single voice"
to the vendors for important (compatibility related) standards issues.
By opening up the discussion to the public via this newsgroup, we hope
to better represent real-world users, not just the "academic" few who
usually participate in standards adventures. At that time, I volunteered
to coordinate such "de facto" (better called "de dicto") standards
creation for the ALU, though commentary would be open to all interested
parties.  comp.std.lisp would be the place to hold specific focused
discussion on these evolving standards, which would ultimately evolve
into some sort of request to the vendor community to support specific
features (in addition to, or in place of overlapping features they
already support).

While the initial discussion on comp.std.lisp will concentrate on
common-lisp, it is not, in principle, so limited; it is intended to be a
good place for users of any lisp dialect to communicate and attempt to
agree on non-formal standards that can be used as feedback from users to
vendors and other implementation groups. However, where better forums for 
a particular dialect or branch of lisp exists, the user will be strongly
encouraged by the moderator to use that forum instead of comp.std.lisp 
(since presumably that will be where the audience for the idea is).

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Standard Guidelines for voting apply - one vote per person, etc...
100 more YES votes than NO votes and 2/3 of all votes being YES are
the requirements for group creation.  Read news.announce.newusers
and news.groups for more information on the group creation process.

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lisp groups Ballot    [lisp-01]

Give your real name here:

[Your Vote]  Group
------------------
[         ]  comp.org.lisp-users
[         ]  comp.std.lisp

-=-=- Do Not Delete Anything Between These Lines -=-=-
-- 
Jan Isley, the Knight who says ACK, can be reached at
jan@bagend.atl.ga.us  or  mathcs.emory.edu!bagend!jan