werner@ut-ngp.UUCP (03/24/84)
[food for bugs] [ask about our special mixture] WELCOME to this new group "net.mag" ------------------------------------ First, a few words about why it was created. Premise: The major purpose and justification of the expenses incurred by participating in USENET is the sharing of computer-related information. One of the major problems in the computer field (as well as others) is keeping up-to-date with the flood of information. There is an extra- ordinary number of magazines and journals we'd like to keep up with but are unable to, either because we don't have convenient access to them, or because we simply don't have the time to go to libraries and wait in line for someone else to finish reading the one we are interested in. And in particular outside the US, many magazines are simply not available in libraries, and subscriptions are very expensive and arrive very late. So, wouldn't it be nice, to get to read on the net a quick summary of most magazines shortly after appearing in print, calling our attention to articles or news to look out for? The idea, of course, depends on cooperation by many who like the idea enough to take on the responsibility and work of summarizing one or several magazines they read. Sharing the work would, ideally, mean that any one person would need to summarize only one publication but some might be idealistic enough to do several, especially to start out with. Our hope is, that this group will become a prime example of how we can all benefit a lot by contributing a little. Most of what I see posted in the many groups confirms this spirit and willingness of cooperation, so I'd expect this group to grow and prosper (if there is such a thing with news-groups). A comment about the name of the group. Our original idea was the creation of groups named "net.mag.summary" and "net.mag.discussion" as such a seperation is the only way within the limitations of the present news-software to easily specify that you only want to read the summaries and not the likely flood of flames and discussions about articles and authors. (In case you do not know this, the merits of creating / deleting a news-group takes place in a group named "net.news.group". Any super-user can create/delete a group as such an action gets propagated through the net.) I proposed the creation of a new group there for the purpose of posting magazine-summaries, suggesting the name "net.mag.summary" ... What happened then was intriguing. I received over a dozen mail-messages from different people who thought the idea had merit. A discussion on "net.news.group" never took place. Nobody created the group, and not having 'super-user' powers, I cannot do so myself. Now I dislike having a good idea killed by apathy and inaction, so I decided to post as a follow-up, an example of a magazine-summary, as an argument to convince someone to create the group. I achieved the latter, and an understanding "super-duper" created a group "net.mag" as a compromise, which can be split into sub-groups at a later time, if the amount of traffic and the demands of enough netters ask for it. "net.mag" exists - now what As indicated earlier, we need volunteers to summarize some magazines, and post TOCs (Table of Contents). We gave some thought about creating a moderated group for this purpose, to avoid having different persons posting TOCs of the same material (and to avoid discussions, flames, and other static) but let's hope that that will not be neccessary by using a bit of 'methodical anarchy' (-: What's that? Let me suggest (and this is a 'suggestion only') we proceed in the following way: Anyone who wants to post a TOC of a mag or journal do so, while she/he has not seen it covered yet. The propagation delays are so small for news, that the latest statistics indicate that you should see 99% of all articles posted anywhere within 3 days. As the preparation of TOCs is woluntary 'work' I don't expect that many double-postings will occur, but should it happen, I, for one, will be delighted by these signs of cooperation. If double postings of TOCs should become a nuisance to anyone, we might want to 'assign' a journal to be covered by one or several persons who then take on the responsibility to post a TOC in a timely fashion soon after new editions come out. If someone wants to resign and pass on this responsibility, he should, simply, indicate so in an article. Should 'friendly anarchy' fail, there is always dictatorship to fall back on (moderated groups).