davidson@sdcsvax.UUCP (Greg Davidson) (10/30/85)
In the week since I asked US readers of net.internat to send me a note
I've received 58 messages. 56 are from North American readers (which
is the group I should have specified), one from a confused European and
one from someone who wanted to lecture me on newsgroup creation rules.
Many of the responses gave reasons for the importance of net.internat
being distributed in North America, including:
1) Their company makes products for an international market.
2) Their company has overseas customers.
3) There's a need to provide for French (Quebecois), Spanish (US Southwest)
and other non-English users within North America.
Although I only asked for a count of readers, 49 of the 56 messages
mentioned (usually very enthusiastically) their support for the group.
Several people said it was one of their favorite newsgroups.
So the question is: Are we going to follow the rules strictly, or take
the overwhelming support for the group as demonstrated by this and
other tallies and all the other articles as sufficient justification
for creating the group?
I must plead guilty to being one of the great unwashed who only follow
net.news.group occasionally. Like most people, I naively thought that
newsgroups only had to demonstrate their value and support. I didn't
know that it had been decided that all new newsgroups must be spinoffs
from existing groups. I had thought this was a sufficient, not a
necessary condition for newsgroup creation.
I don't find this rule to be a very good test of the value of a
newsgroup. I urge that newsgroups creation be based solely on the
value of the group, not its origin. Value is certainly a matter of
opinion, but such discussion is what net.news.group is for. I would
like to see this policy examined again. I will be reading net.news.group
carefully from now on, because I don't want to be caught by such
unpleasant surprises again.
While I have your attention, I would like to ask you all to make
net.news.group easier to read by (1) sticking to consistent titles (so
I can skip discussions irrelevant to me) and (2) taking tallies of
support by mail and summarizing them in one article. I realize that
steady readers probably follow these rules, yet it seems that most
articles do not.
Finally, Gene and others: Please continue your good work, yet note that
precipitous action (no matter if justified by the rules) generates great
heat and controversy. Please always hold a discussion before removing
a group that has been improperly formed.
_Greg Davidson, SA, Virtual Infinity Systems, San Diego
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