mikes@lakesys.lakesys.com (Mike Shawaluk) (11/24/89)
In article <1989Nov24.072732.5206@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu writes: >>We didn't do it for MSDOS or the Amiga or any of the other operating >>systems, and this somehow hasn't caused any major problems, even though >>the groups concerned with those systems are among the busiest on Usenet. >>Why on Earth should we do it for VMS? >Because, as several others have pointed out, VMSNET is _not just_ >a set of groups about VMS. It's also --- and this is very important --- >a hierarchy controlled by DECUS' VMSNET group. This means it will >_never_ be a part of the Usenet, in that it won't have the Usenet >style, won't follow Usenet voting conventions, won't necessarily >uphold the "no commercial speech" rules, etc. As long as we're on the subject, and because I'm an Amiga owner, I noticed that there are one or two Amiga-related newsgroups under VMSNET. Thus, these groups are sort of parallel existances of comp.sys.amiga.* (except that in my recent reading, they seem to be a bit off the beaten path, since many if not most of the posters there don't get comp.*). Since my main site doesn't (currently) get vmsnet.*, I don't see this material very regularly, but it seems to me that creating an alternate news hierarchy shouldn't duplicate existing newsgroups that aren't related to that hierarchy's purpose or scope. That is, if there were a specific class of issues that dealt with the Amiga and VAX/VMS systems, then maybe it would be okay to have one or more Amiga groups under VMSNET. But to me, it just looks like most of the posters only have BITNET access (i.e., no Internet), and so they're in an isolated subspace. And with the (lack of) acceptance of VMSNET, it seems that they will stay there. -- - Mike Shawaluk "Rarely have we seen a mailer -> DOMAIN: mikes@lakesys.lakesys.com fail which has thoroughly -> UUCP: ...!uunet!marque!lakesys!mikes followed these paths." -> BITNET: 7117SHAWALUK@MUCSD