wjh@wayback.UUCP (Bill Hery) (09/16/87)
First, an apology: I recently responded to an article in net.music.misc about jazz; the article was cross posted to several news groups (including net.misc) and I neglected to edit the newsgroup line to include only the relevant newsgroups. I have seen enough other cross posted followups to be aware of this problem in general and offer my apologies to the readers of net.misc for my carelessness. I should have known better. Next a suggestion: Wouldn't it be better if the software for following up an article defaulted to only the current newsgroup and actively asked if you really wanted to reply in all the other newsgroups? In looking through news.misc today (I don't subscribe), I noticed a large number of cross posted followups that did not belong here, and I suspect that most would not have been here with the mechanism I propose. Certainly mine wouldn't have been. And another suggestion: The original posting was probably cross posted because there is no appropriate home for jazz articles. rec.music.misc is dominated by rock in its myriad forms, and has so much traffic that it discourages jazz fans from subscribing. Periodically, there is a move to establish a rec.music.jazz, but even though there are usually many postings in support there is apparantly not enough to get a group started. This is partly a chicken and egg problem: many potential supporters of a jazz group don't bother reading a rock newsgroup. Other musical genres have faced a similar problem, with a few (classical, folk) getting newsgroups, and others (jazz, c&w, easy listening) not. How about having a rock newsgroup, so music.misc can really cover what seems to be the miscellania of the musical interests of the usenet readers? And last, a complaint: Not surprisingly, I got a few email complaints about my cross posting. No complaint--I knew about the problem, but still needed a reminder. One, however I considered to be extremely rude and infantile: > Please keep this jazz crud out of news.misc! > -- > Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc. > Internet: campbell@maynard.bsw.com 120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109 > uucp: {husc6,mirror,think}!maynard!campbell +1 617 367 6846 If Mr. Campbell is referring to jazz as crud, I think his narrow mindedness is obvious. If he thinks my article was crud, I would be glad to hear and respond to specific complaints about the content of the article; in fact I would love to see more dialog on jazz appearing on the net. He did say please, so maybe he is to be forgiven for remaining rudeness. Bill Hery
John_M@spectrix.UUCP (John Macdonald) (09/24/87)
In article <1197@wayback.UUCP> wjh@wayback.UUCP (Bill Hery) writes:
-> [...]
->And another suggestion:
->
->The original posting was probably cross posted because there is no
->appropriate home for jazz articles. rec.music.misc is dominated by rock in
->its myriad forms, and has so much traffic that it discourages jazz fans from
->subscribing. Periodically, there is a move to establish a rec.music.jazz,
->but even though there are usually many postings in support there is
->apparantly not enough to get a group started. This is partly a chicken and
->egg problem: many potential supporters of a jazz group don't bother reading
->a rock newsgroup. Other musical genres have faced a similar problem, with a
->few (classical, folk) getting newsgroups, and others (jazz, c&w, easy
->listening) not. How about having a rock newsgroup, so music.misc can really
->cover what seems to be the miscellania of the musical interests of the
->usenet readers?
-> [...]
This sounds to me like an excellent argument for the creation of
rec.music.rock (not rec.music.jazz), assuming that the above statement
that "rec.music.misc is dominated by discussion of rock" is correct
(I don't subscribe to it). Separating off rock would leave the misc
group available for its normal purpose - discussions of music topics
that don't have sufficient volume to justify their own group.
This might be an usefull principle to consider for people who trying
to establish a splinter discussion group because the collective group
is dominated by some other topic. Ask that a new group be created
for the topic with obvious demand, rather than for the one that can't
be heard in the background.
--
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John Macdonald UUCP: {mnetor,utzoo} !spectrix!jmm
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