edhew@xenitec.on.ca (Ed Hew) (12/10/89)
In article <57749@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: >In article <765@lakart.UUCP> dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough) writes: >>Very probably soc.culture.korean will not get the readership that >>comp.unix.wizards does. Just because it plays to a smaller audience, is it >>any less a newsgroup? > >No, not when comparing a group with 1 reader/machine to a group with >6 readers/machine. But there has to be a line somewhere, where a group >is less worthy of complete-net-propagation if very few want to read it. >To paraphrase a joke from RHF, soc.culture.jewish.lesbian.civil_war_daughters >might have an audience, but it shouldn't be a newsgroup. Don't we all currently use our own individual criteria to determine what we do (and in the case of some sites, don't) propogate? When the time (if ever) comes that s.c.j.l.c can demonstrate that it should become a newsgroup (vrs a mailing list), then we collectively cross that bridge. In order to do so painlessly, all that is required is for the champion to ensure that the "s" is for soc, not sci. (yeah, I know we've choaked that one to death, but let's not go through it again in a few months, ok?) >I am all in favour of drawing the line as low as we can as resources get >cheaper and cheaper. But it does have to be drawn somewhere. Topics >below that line simply have to become mailing lists, or groups with >dynamic distribution. Currently the "line" is drawn as per the guidelines (when observed). You're proposing that the guidelines reflect the cost of resources? If so, what criteria (sp?) would you suggest we use, bearing in mind that the amount any given site can spend on additional resources varies dramatically? I suspect that most of us don't run USENET news as a commercial (profit making) endeavour, therefore we are subsidising it with our other activities. I personally have no problems with doing so (in fact it sometimes seems that 'NET info' augments my regular activities [news.groups aside :-)], however the is a limit on what each site will spend, and that limit varies with the funding of the site. I currently devote more disk space to news than my entire system had (in aggregate) three years ago, and I'm still running ridiculously low times in my explist. The sheer volume keeps outstriping my ability to purchase "cheaper" resources. As long as USENET volume continues to triple annually (or worse), resources are going to have to become a lot cheaper just to allow us to continue to tread water on diskspace. Unfortunately, Ma Bell isn't likely to drastically reduce long distance phone rates, so until Telebit comes up with a good 32.4KB PEP modem, we're into a crunch here. Our site is fortunate in that all our 'NET neighbours (except 2 low volume ones) are in our local calling area so our phone bills are small. We know that many sites are not so fortunate, and they are constantly hit harder and harder as volume continues to increase. Hence I am always torn between the potential value of a new group vrs adding Yet Another New Group (which of course) will usually begin to generate it's own *new* traffic. I want to offer my users and downstream sites as full a feed as possible, but hey, there appear to be some real limits looming in the future. Yes, we do need a YANG creation threashold, but what should it be? Don't we kind-of already have this? Are we perhaps discussing the addition of yet another level of complexity? Who is going to monitor what is reasonable before initiating YANG discussion? Will we all agree that the threashold and monitoring methods are valid? Will all abide by them in our nice little anarchy? Do all abide now? 1/2 :-) Sorry, I don't have answers today, merely questions. >Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 Ed. A. Hew work: edhew@xenicon.uucp -or- ..!{uunet!}utai!lsuc!xenicon!edhew ->home: edhew@xenitec.on.ca -or- ..!{uunet!}watmath!xenitec!edhew # This posting has absolutely nothing to do with what I do for a living.