kent@happym.UUCP (Kent Forschmiedt) (06/16/88)
Regarding the ride sharing and many other proposed newsgroups: This is a subject which, while of perhaps global interest, is obviously of local scope. Such subjects need regional distribution, and my preference is to put them in regional hierarchies. At this site, we get two local hierarchies: pnw.* and seattle.*. They are actually rather underused, and each contains only a "general" group. I would like to see things like the proposed group go into one or the other of those, in this area. Pnw.ride-sharing would be a useful group. In other areas, e.g. ba.ride-sharing and dallas.ride-sharing would be equally valuable. On the other hand, misc.ride-sharing, regardless of the best efforts of the net's conscientious administrators, would be filled with dozens of articles with no value to the vast majority of the user community. For examples, see misc.forsale. In general, I would like to see more use made of the local hierarchies, and the distribution feature put to better use. A great many of the current difficulties with net congestion could be relieved by sending less junk to places that have no use for it, or can generate plenty of their own. Bulletin board systems in the Seattle area recognize these ideas. In the very popular Stonehenge network, 5 to 20 percent of each system's local traffic is shared with the network (with the notable exception of a few hub or backbone nodes). The rest is generally of no interest to users of other systems. While the analogy is inexact, it can be applied to the Usenet. For example, many of the talk, rec, and soc groups might be more useful if they were routinely limited to, for example, colleges only or a specific region. It has already become impractical for many of us to move and store as much information as this network generates. Please help us to keep it useful. -- Kent Forschmiedt -- kent@happym.UUCP, tikal!camco!happym!kent Happy Man Corporation 206-282-9598