chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (10/14/87)
My posting about three days ago splitting hypercard programming discussion out of comp.sys.mac has been given a strong positive support. In three days I've already gotten 20 positive (and no negative) replies. At the rate I'm getting mail on this, I should have over 50 responses by the end of the weekend, so I don't think the size of the interested group is a problem. The moderated/unmoderated question was a landslide against moderation, with 1 person for, about 12 people against, and 7 who didn't mention a preference. A large number of people who responded also suggested other groups that should be split out of the Mac group. Looking at the volume and readership numbers for comp.sys.mac, I tend to agree. There's LOTS of mac folks out there, and I think comp.sys.mac is starting to overflow. I think it is time to split it up a bit. Looking at the kind of messages that are flowing in comp.sys.mac these days, I think the following list of groups is reasonable. I'm throwing this list out for debate to see if it can be improved. I don't think we need to argue about whether the new groups are needed (I expect we'll get it anyway, but what the heck) -- the Mac population is a large subset of the net and comp.sys.mac has gotten big enough that we need to do something to make it more useful to its readers. Anyway, my suggestion for new groups follows. Comments and improvements are welcome. NEW GROUPS comp.sys.mac.hardware comp.sys.mac.hypercard comp.sys.mac.mac2 comp.sys.mac.misc comp.sys.mac.programming comp.sys.mac.wanted comp.sources.mac.hypercard (moderated) Once these groups are set up, we should alias to comp.sys.mac to comp.sys.mac.misc to keep things in line with the rest of the net. I do recommend setting up a new moderated group for hypercard stacks. Since I'm silly enough to recommeend it, I'll volunteer to moderate it as well, since I'm planning on doing something similar on the ARPA side. Which brings me to a pre-announcement. I am going to be starting a new ARPA mailing list that I want to run in cooepration with the new hypercard stack list and comp.sys.mac.hypercard. It'll be called HYPER-HACKERS and will be set up in the same general way that SF-LOVERs is: stuff posted to USENET gets digested and sent to the ARPA list, stuff mailed to the ARPA list will get cross posted onto USENET. I'll probably also look at setting up a cultural exchange with Delphi the way Jeff does with INFO-MAC. Anyway, I'm interested in feedback on the group names. I'd like to see this hashed out and implemented as quickly as reasonable. I've set a followup-to to news.groups -- further discussions should go there, no the mac group. chuq Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM Editor, OtherRealms Delphi: CHUQ
twakeman@hpcea.CE.HP.COM (Teriann Wakeman) (10/16/87)
I agree, it wouldn't hurt to split Comp.sys.mac, but I think that you are
splitting into too many fragmants. I would suggest:
comp.sys.mac.hypercard -for all hypercard related discussions
comp.sys.mac.programming -for questions and discussions about any
non-hypercard programing on the Mac
comp.sys.mac - for all hardware, system, and non-programming
application questions and discussions.
Comp.sources.mac.hypercard -for posting of stackware
comp.binaries(or sources).mac - combine comp.sources.mac and comp.binaries.mac
as there does not seem to be enough activity
to justify both.
I feel that this kind of split would be a better fit as to what people would
be apt to read.There are many people who read comp.sys.mac who are not
interested in programming and once the hoopla dies down probably would not be
interested in reading about Hypercard. But I think that many people are
interested in learning and discussing old and new Macs as well as their
applications. I'm not convinced that there is a large natural split of
interests there. Comp.sources.mac just has not shown any appriciable
activity. Almost all the posting has been on comp.binaries.mac.
TeriAnn Wakeman
Hewlett-Packard Mac Users Group co-ordinator
(415)857-5057