david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (09/06/88)
[Spaf made some comments that practically nobody complained when he
stopped Posting the Postings last summer, and that perhaps the group
for Posting the Postings should be removed?]
I want to join the chorus of people saying that we need to continue to
have the Postings Posted. However maybe some changes are in order.
First off I have been suggesting to people for a long time that they
spin off sections of the Commonly Asked Questions into regular Postings
of a similar nature in particular newsgroups. This has borne some
fruit, some people in comp.graphics sounded serious some time ago about
setting up such a thing and may have actually done so, I know of
people setting up something for comp.sys.amiga, and I have a nagging
memory about another one somewhere. I have been planning on fixing
up one for a comp.mail group, but haven't had the time so far. The
intention is to get the information into the newsgroup where it will
do the most good, rather than putting in this newsgroup way over yonder
that no-one ever subscribes to...
For the other Postings maybe a similar strategem should be followed.
Go ahead and keep the novices documents and continue posting them, but
cross-post 'em to lots of the .misc groups. This way you don't
have to rely on beginners being told up front to go to n.a.newusers,
they will stumble on the introductory documents all by themselves.
This won't cost the net any more than it does now -- er.. well, that
is assuming that this suggestion doesn't start a flame war, or that
making broad-ranging cross-postings doesn't inflame a lot of people.
You never know how the net is going to take a suggestion after all.
Anyway, it may end up saving the net some bandwidth by making it more
likely for people to be educated in the ways of the net.
I can see people having valid complaints about having to see the
new-users documents all the time. A couple of options which come
to mind are 1) rely on people putting entries into global KILL
files, 2) post only a short note giving some help and pointing
people over to n.a.newusers.
Someone asked why post diff's all the time. Wee-eell, I can't speak
for others, but I like seeing the diff's so that I have some idea
of the recent changes -- like, new newsgroups & mailing lists & the like.
--
<---- David Herron -- One of the MMDF guys <david@ms.uky.edu>
<---- ska: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<---- The owner of the talkative, blatant and period bikini is a Van Halen fan
<---- I'm a Talking Heads fan ... can you say 'incompatible'?paul@devon.UUCP (Paul Sutcliffe Jr.) (09/12/88)
In article <10219@s.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron) writes: +--------- | I want to join the chorus of people saying that we need to continue to | have the [Newuser] Postings Posted. However maybe some changes are in | order. +--------- I, too, feel that the Newuser postings are A Good Thing. I'm not sure I approve of David's idea to crosspost them to lots of misc. groups, though. I think that more sites should accept the responsibility of carrying netnews -- that its users need to be taught proper netiquette before posting, and that guidelines can be found in the *.newuser group. But this is the reason for my following-up to this article: +--------- | Someone asked why post diff's all the time. Wee-eell, I can't speak | for others, but I like seeing the diff's so that I have some idea | of the recent changes -- like, new newsgroups & mailing lists & the like. +--------- As an experienced news reader (~3 years now), I feel that I no longer should have to read the *.newuser group. However, I still subscribe to it so that I can catch the "diffs" postings. I, like David, like to quickly see the changes in the newsgroups, mailing lists and the like. I think that Spaf (jokingly) mentioned creating a new group called "news.announce.olduser" to be the home of the diff postings. I *like* this idea (even the name)! I'd like to see some discussion on this. Note that I did *not* direct followups to news.groups, as I am not (yet) requesting comments on the actual creation of such a group. Please reply via e-mail, and I'll post a summary followup article. - paul -- Paul Sutcliffe, Jr. +-------------------------------+ | Two wrongs don't make a right | UUCP: paul@devon.UUCP | But three lefts do! | or : ...rutgers!bpa!vu-vlsi!devon!paul +-------------------------------+
spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) (09/13/88)
This time around, I posted all the diffs to news.misc instead of
news.announce.newusers. If people think the diffs deserve
their own group instead of the misc group, sound off and
let me know.
--spaf
--
Gene Spafford
NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center,
Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004
Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf