gen-vote@phri.UUCP (delete net.general) (02/15/86)
I hereby propose that net.general be deleted. Before you leap to
your soapbox, hear me out. Then, MAIL your vote to gen-vote@phri. Since I
anticipate a *lot* of mail on this one, please include either the string
"delete net.general" or "keep net.general" in the subject; the count will
be done by a shell script. If you have something you actually want me to
read, also include the string "discussion".
According to the "Rules for posting to net.general" which Gene
Spafford (gatech!spaf) posts every month, net.general is only for items
that *everybody* on the net should read. I submit that there really aren't
any articles that meet that criterion; for the few that do, net.news.adm or
net.announce is probably more appropriate. I've put this on net.general
only because if I don't, people will complain, "How come you didn't ask us,
the readers of net.general, what *we* thought?"
Personally, I don't get too worked up over the errant postings on
net.general. What bothers me more is the massive traffic on net.followup
that gets generated after every one. We all know about the dinette set,
and the earring, and the speaker system. We don't need 25 flames about
each one. The resources wasted shipping those flames around far exceed
what it cost to send the original article. The particular article that
prompted me to post this proposal was about 50 lines long. The original
was about 5; right there we're 10:1 in flames.
So, send me your vote. Please, do *not* post your vote to the
entire network. If you have something to add to the discussion, mail it to
gen-vote@phri and I will post periodic summaries (on net.news.group). If
you have something to add that absolutely, positively must be posted, at
least post it to net.news.group where it belongs.
--
Roy Smith, {allegra,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016