David Formosa (aka ? the Platypus) >
wrote:

> On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 23:50:51 +0200, Victor Sack > wrote:
> > [Notice to rfc readers: crosspost to aus.net.news]
> >
> > David Formosa (aka ? the Platypus) >
> > wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> I would guess Germany.
> >
> > Indeed. And that means that I'm intimately familiar with most every
> > argument and problem discussed so far.
>
> I can think of one that hasn't been mentioned seasonally. Australian
> sesons are 180 degrees out of phase with Northen Hemisphere seasons.
> As topics arise from the sesonal change in freash ingredents, from an
> Australian perspective this newsgroup is upside down. You talk about
> summer foods in winter and winter foods in summer.

Good point! Still, considering that a lot of produce and other seasonal
ingredients are imported from both hemispheres nowadays, this is by far
not as critical as it used to be many years ago. As to the "seasonal
style", personally, I basically disregard the seasons, often eating
"winter foods" in the summer and vice versa. The only exception is that
I rarely eat cold soups in winter. But, as I said, good point.

> > So, why am I persevering? Because I hold that there is very little
> > doubt that the creation of aus.food will be damaging to the
> > rec.food.cooking, if only very, very slightly, because it will likely
> > divert some useful traffic from it. This is a good enough reason for
> > opposing the proposal.
>
> That argument isn't realy a valid one in terms of aus.net.news. If it
> was valid then it would mean that almost no newsgroups would be
> created under aus.* for fear of siphoning off traffic from alt and the
> big8.

I think it is valid, because it really is a question of how many
denizens of the global newsgroup would want to vote "no" to prevent a
de-facto split. A demonstration of real interest would be a better
counter-argument, so it should be presented, I believe.

> > BTW, only Usenet traffic
> > matters here; mailing lists, no matter how numerous or popular, are
> > irrelevant.
>
> In the past we have counted mailing list and other forums to estimate
> interest. I'm unsure of Nick's current policy on this.

Interesting. It really is a question of whether different audiences
overlap. Besides, mere existence of certain forums is no proof of
anything. At the very least, a straw poll should be done in each of the
forums to gauge an interest in the newsgroup.

Victor