74 Why rec.autos.sport. and not rec.sport.autos. ?
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This article is from the Motorsport FAQ, by A H Henry bspahh@midge.bath.ac.uk with numerous contributions by others.
74 Why rec.autos.sport. and not rec.sport.autos. ?
A long long time ago (in the mid 80s), on a usenet far far away, there
were two newsgroups about cars: rec.autos, and rec.autos.tech.
Discussions about motorsports tended to disappear in the noise (and
there was every bit as much noise in rec.autos then as there is now.) A
number of rec.autos residents who wanted more discussion of a sporting
nature briefly discussed getting a group created, but instead we
settled for a mailing list. The auto-sports mailing list was run from a
Vax at GE R & D for about two years, administered by me (Richard
Welty.) It eventually became so popular that it killed itself, having
impacted the GE R & D long distance bills enough that the corporate
bean counters noticed it and ordered it stopped (GE did not have a good
quality Internet link at the time.)
Fortunately, the auto-sports mailing list was also successful enough
that I convinced myself that it was worth trying to run a vote for a
new Usenet newsgroup. The only major issue to decide was the name.
After extended discussion, we settled on rec.autos.sport, as most of us
had come together via rec.autos in the first place. Other strong
candidates were rec.sport.autos and rec.sport.motor (on reflection a
placement in rec.sport might have been a better idea, but that's all
old news articles in the bitbucket now).
One thing that was felt very strongly at the time was that in light
of the interminable arguments on what constituted a `sports car' that
regularly consumed rec.autos, we felt that rec.autos.sport was for
sporting discussions. We could see no way in which a meaningful, useful
discussion could be held on whether a Chevy Camaro was any more or less
a sports car than a Bugeye Sprite. I think that this holds true today.
rec.autos.sport should continue to be for sporting discussions.
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