Subject: (no subject given)

From: [email-masked] (Julie K. Stahlhut)
Date: 16 Jun 1996 02:57:43 GMT

sci.bio.entomology.homoptera
Subject: Interest in Hymenoptera group?
Reply-To: [email-masked] (Julie K. Stahlhut)
References: 
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)

As a co-founder of sci.bio.entomology.lepidoptera, the first entomology
newsgroup in the sci. hierarchy, I've been pleased to see two other 
entomology groups take off within a year or so of the first.  

I do love my leps, but am currently doing my graduate research on 
solitary wasps, and realize now that there is a large community
of both obligate and facultative :-) hymenopterists out there.  
This is an informal request (I'm frantically busy this summer with
lots of other things), but I'm just wondering -- is there interest 
out there, in the long run, in proposing sci.bio.entomology.hymenoptera?
I know that there are beekeeping groups, but those are obviously
specialized in other ways.  Given the number of researchers I know of
who are studying bees, wasps, ants, sawflies, and the like, it seems 
like a hymenops group might work.
 
What do people think?
-- 
Julie K. Stahlhut, Caterpillar Rightsizer        [email-masked]
  "You cannot have unsecured gonads in an area frequented by
     college students."
                                   -- Dave Barry

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From: [email-masked] (Doug Yanega)
Date: 16 Jun 1996 04:30:16 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]

> like a hymenops group might work.

I think most of the hymenopterists around make use of mailing lists rather
than usenet newsgroups, because they are so specialized. I study native
bees, both solitary and social, and so I have to subscribe to Bombus-L,
bee-L, socinsct-L, and polpal-L just to cover myself (for all my
bee-related specialty needs). Of these, bee-L generates and incredible
amount of traffic since it is the only one where beekeeping is discussed,
while the other groups are very quiet and sporadic. I don't know if there
are ant lists. My impression is that UNLESS it is open to honeybee
workers, a hymenopterist newsgroup is likely to fall prey to the fate of
sci.bio.entomology.homoptera - so little used as to be of negligible
interest. Having watched the Net operate for many years now, my impression
is that truly specialized needs are addressed by mailing lists, and things
of more general interest do well as newsgroups. Further, splitting of one
newsgroup into several is really best when the traffic reaches some
critical mass - i.e., when the average reader starts to find it hard to
keep up, or finds too high a proportion of the traffic devoted to a
single, marginal topic. I don't see that as being a problem in s.b.e.misc
presently, and I'd say that indicates there's no need to split off more
groups. It's not so much whether a specialty newsgroup "would work" as
much as whether we *need* one in order to have a useful forum - the same
arguments, after all, could be made for Coleoptera, Orthoptera,
Neuroptera...but the traffic here is so light, it's not like anyone is
getting swamped and needs breathing room. I'd say that if there are
hymenopterists around, they, like myself, should be reading s.b.e.misc and
perfectly willing and happy to use it to discuss Hymenoptera.
Cheers,

Doug Yanega     ([email-masked])
Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E. Peabody Dr. 
Champaign, IL 61820  USA  (217) 244-6817 fax:(217) 333-4949
affiliate, University of Illinois Dept. of Entomology
  http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu:80/~dyanega/my_home.html
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is
    the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick

---

From: Anne Kilmer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 17:15:12 -0400

Doug Yanega wrote:
> I study native
> bee-related specialty needs).snip
 My impression is that UNLESS it is open to honeybee
> interest.snip
 I'd say that if there are
> Doug Yanega     ([email-masked]) "There are some enterprises in
 which a careful disorderliness is
>     the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick

How true, how true.

I'd be sorry to lose the wasps and bees from entomo-l, and I enjoy their
mention on the leps list, where they occasionally slip in as passengers.
But I'm not sure I'd go hunt them down elsewhere.
We'd wind up double-posting questions all the time (howcome wasps keep
taking my butterflies)
the social insects list surely is abstruse enough for those who weary of
chatty amateurs. (I lurk there.)
Anne Kilmer