flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) (06/03/90)
>Consider the novice: "I want to post an article about software written >in C. Let's see... Oh, good! This one is news.software.c! It must >be about C software!" This is a presentation problem. The place to fix this is in newsreader programs. Use the short newsgroup description whenever useful. Institute the concept of a newsgroup charter, store these, and make them easily accessible on demand. (This is assuming you believe in having newsgroups in the first place.) Names should be evocative, rather than descriptive. A descriptive name like "usenet.news-system.software.c-news-by-henry-and-geoff" is clumsy and only marginally more informative than a short name like "c-news". Naming wars occur because noone agrees on exactly what newsgroup names are for. They're administrative, informative, hierarchic, and random. -- Felix Lee flee@shire.cs.psu.edu *!psuvax1!flee
chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) (06/04/90)
[ Followups to news.groups. ] According to flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee): >>Consider the novice: ... "news.software.c! It must be about C software!" > >This is a presentation problem. The place to fix this is in >newsreader programs. Newsreaders should show the group description, true. But I don't think we should ignore the installed base of "rn" and "vnews" users. But this naming issue is probably beside the point. The real issue is: How should we divide the discussion of Usenet news software? I'd support replacing "news.software.b" with "news.software.transport". -- Chip Salzenberg at ComDev/TCT <chip@tct.uucp>, <uunet!ateng!tct!chip>