oyster@uwmacc.UUCP (Vicious Oyster) (11/15/85)
In article <829@masscomp.UUCP> lip@masscomp.UUCP (John Lipinski) writes: >In article <2103@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes: >>> ************************** FLAME ********************************** >>> I, for one, am sick and tired of reading complaints about Doug's >>> postings to this news group. If you dregs out there are tired >>> of reading so much about KB, then start contributing more articles >>> about other musicians you do like. >>> ********************* END OF FLAME ******************************** >>> [R. PRESTON] >>Bra-vo!!!! Thank you very much! Well said. > >Second that!! Applause, Applause!! > Here's some hard facts for you people to consider. I condensed this from three representative articles which appeared in net.news.groups (where the fate of newsgroups is discussed) recently. Things to keep in mind while perusing this are the rmgrouping of net.bizarre and the dropping of net.flame by most of the backbone sites. My comments are enclosed in brackets. -- Much of the "volume reduction" discussion seems to center on questions of which newsgroups to eliminate. The USENET top fifteen: net.news.group: 575403 7.19 net.music: 392347 4.91 net.sources: 319899 4.00 net.sources.mac: 298630 3.73 net.flame: 291171 3.64 . . The USENET top 15, cross-post compensated: net.music: 370451 4.63 net.news.group: 341738 4.27 net.sources: 289265 3.62 net.sources.mac: 283740 3.55 . . To give a point of comparison, in the last six days, Rich Rosen posted 146193 bytes, amounting to a little under two percent of USENET volume. These groups still amount to roughly forty percent of the total net content, but notice that most of the popular candidates for removal have moved down. Net.flame, in particular, has dropped dramatically. Notice also that most of these groups are "content" groups, one third are technical [ THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART ---vvvvvvvvv] or net.administrative, and that net.music, which no one gripes about, has an incredibly high volume, much of which turns out to be extensive lists of peoples' favorite guitarists. (Raw data not posted; check for yourself). [Actually, most of it is Kate Bush/Madonna flamage, obnoxious meta-discussions like this one, and Kirschner & Palena sitting side by side at their keyboards, chuckling to themselves while having world-wide "private" discussions.] rst@tardis -- The removal of net.flame and net.bizarre by certain sites is the beginning of a re-examination of what this network has become and where those who are supporting it think it should go. Net.flame was not the first to fail to meet the minimum standards and I suspect it will not be the last. [This all translates to: Net.music is next on the target list] ---rick -- [The following type of comparison has been used to demonstrate that the excessive volume of certain newsgroups is due to the obsessions of a few hyperactive persons. The reasoning goes like this: the newsgroups with a large even mix of contributors will not change much in status with the deletion of messages by the exceedingly vocal. On the other hand, if a newsgroup drops in the ratings, that means that those few people account for a large percentage of the volume. Notice the relatively large percentage drop of net.music] Here are the average article sizes and top 25 groups minus top 25 users for Nov. 10: Orig. Avg. Art. New % Rank Rank Size Kbytes Chg. Group 1 1 1.4 563.8 4.1% net.news.group 2 2 1.7 319.3 23.0% net.politics 3 6 1.5 308.4 7.5% net.flame . . 9 3 4.0 208.7 46.7% net.sources 10 4 1.1 197.1 48.1% net.music 11 5 2.3 189.8 50.1% net.philosophy . . Again, note the number of large drops. For comparison, Rich Rosen (the top user) would have been 3rd on this list. Charley Wingate -- Further commentary: It's fine to tell people to quit complaining about excessive Kate Bush flamage/counter-flamage, but increasing the volume of net.music postings will only make it that much more visible as a "non-essential" (aka "noise") newsgroup. Do you *really* want this newsgroup to be removed (like net.bizarre), or dropped by enough backbone sites to effectively make it into 120 totally disconnected local groups? If you don't think things like this can or will happen, I advise you to read some of what the site administrators have been writing in net.news.groups; I have been, and it's frightening. - Joel Plutchak {allegra,ihnp4,seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!oyster "Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry." - PG