[net.news.adm] A second for Phil Ngai's "two" nets

chris@mddc.UUCP (Chris Maloney) (12/28/83)

I second Phil Ngai's suggestion.  I would like to see 
two logical "nets",  a technical and a non-technical net.  
These would really help sites trying to join the net 
convince the management.  These sites could subscribe 
to the "tech net" first, and hopefully later the 
"non-tech net".  The phone bills can be hard to 
justified in the beginning but a little useful information 
(bug reports, rumors...) from the net, can be a great time saver.

How about:
    use.xxx		"Useful" technical groups
    net.xxx		anything else
- or -
    tech.xxx
    net.xxx

Chris Maloney
Management Decisions Development Corp.
...{ucbvax,decvax,inhp4,mhuxi}!cbosgd!qusavx!mddc!chris		(uucp)

smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin) (12/28/83)

The suggestion was made -- and rejected -- a few years ago.  First, setting
up new top-level groups is *very* difficult.  Second, there's no clear
consensus on what's technical and what's not.  Tell me, how would you
classify net.micro?  How do you think Microsoft classifies it?  Net.religion,
maybe?  Well, we already have In Touch Ministries on the net; even if
net.religion isn't "technical" for them, it's close to the "competition"
notes posted on internal BTL groups by the Library here.  Etc.

		--Steve

chuqui@cae780.UUCP (12/29/83)

The only problem I see in logically splitting the two groups is that it
would give corporations a great excuse to remove the non-technical areas of
the net, and I think that doing so would significantly reduce the utilty of
the net in general because many current users would stop bothering
(reducing the usefulness of the technical end as well)

fair@dual.UUCP (12/29/83)

I disagree. It is (at the moment) perfectly easy to cut down traffic
to those parts of the net which are technical in nature. The 2.10 news
system lets you send/receive any subset of groups you want.

A split like that would make it very easy for `management' (what a nebulous
term!) to cut out those groups which add spice to readnews (or `notes'
for the pagans...).

Besides, we'd have to have yet another *.news.group, and I don't think I
could take reading not only about what to call a group and whether it
should exist, but ALSO which net it should belong to!

Tactics like this look suspiciously like divide & conquer. Phil, has the
`management' of AMD gotten to you? :-)

	a news admin for the status quo (quid quo pro & caveat emptor),

	(also getting fat while being fed by AMD),

	Erik E. Fair	{ucbvax,amd70,zehntel,unisoft,onyx,its}!dual!fair
			Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, California