mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (01/10/86)
The survey was overwhelmingly in favor of net.sources.mac. I got
308 votes from users saying it was important to them. Many were
of the form "Here at {Stanford, Dartmouth, Cornell} we have five
thousand Macs on campus. The stuff posted to net.sources.mac is
put into the local users group and used by many of them" or "It
seems to me that net.sources.mac is one of the few newsgroups that
really justifies having Usenet present on our machine." Votes are
still trickling in but the gist is there.
From administrators, 75% feel net.sources.mac justifies its cost on
their machine (181 in favor, 64 against.)
So it's pretty clear that net.sources.mac should continue, in some form.
It was interesting that, even though I didn't ask for opinions about
moderation and source vs binary, I got lots of them anyway. There were
many people who want source, and many people who want binary. A good
solution would be to post both source AND binary, except that the volume,
which is already quite high, would be doubled. Perhaps when transmission
of news becomes much cheaper (from Stargate, for example) this will be
possible.
I tallied the comments about moderation. Among system administrators,
there were 9 comments in favor of moderation, none against. Among users,
there were 29 in favor, 13 against. (SA's are probably more concerned
about volume, as a group, and users are more concerned about content.)
One advantage to moderation is that it could cut down on volume (primarily
by eliminating duplication and discussion, although if the readers want
quality control, the moderator could be asked to do that.) Another
good reason to moderate would be to gain access to Stargate, which may
not be able to transmit unmoderated news, for legal reasons.
No action has been taken as a result of the poll. However, I propose
the following:
(1) We create a moderated newsgroup for MAC sources, with a name
and charter to be determined by the moderator and the readers.
Roger Long, felix!rlong, has volunteered to be the moderator.
The newsgroup names mod.mac.sources and mod.mac.binaries are
proposed. (This presumably means renaming mod.computers.mac
to be mod.mac at the same time. Such a renaming might matter
if we can get the ARPANET list alive and working, or if we start
a discussion group ala net.micro.mac there. This is a proposal,
and if someone can make a good case for mod.computers.mac.sources
or even mod.computers.macintosh.sources, and if people are really
willing to type such a long name, it should be considered.)
(2) With suitable notice, we remove net.sources.mac, to be replaced
by the moderated group.
(3) We encourage the distribution of BOTH source and binary, with a
mechanism yet to be determined. (For example, the author might send
binary to the moderator, who would archive it and post the binary.
The source would be available on request from the author.)
(4) Some kind of archival service should be created for back issues.
(5) For other non-UNIX source groups, we allow them to be created only
on a moderated basis, patterned after the MAC group. This would
immediately apply to Amiga sources, and possible Atari ST, MS DOS,
and the like as the need develops. In particular, this means that
an Amiga source group could only be created if a moderator were to
volunteer.
All followups to this article have been directed to net.news.group,
so if you want to follow the discussion please read it there, and
if your followup command tries to followup elsewhere, please redirect
it to net.news.group.
Mark Horton