mesard@bbn.com (Wayne Mesard) (11/14/89)
craig@com2serv.c2s.mn.org (Craig S. Wilson) writes: > And, how about allowing for >topical, relatively short-lived groups to extend beyond the 6 months? >That way they wouldn't have to get promoted, only to go dormant a few >months later. These are two separate issues: a "proving ground" for proposed groups, and a place for groups that most folks assume are going to be short-lived. (Call this "topical.*" or "ce.*" (for current events) or "temp".) They'll have a lot in common--groups in both heirarchies are ephemeral, it should be easy to create a group in both, both should be able to give birth to a mainstream group--but there are important differences in intent and administration which argue for keeping them seperate. Recent cases where a current events hierarchy would have come in handy: topical.earthquake topical.inet-worm topical.fusion topical.beijing topical.berlin Of course, in each case there is at least one group which appropriately handled the discussion, but: There was invariably a string of "where do I post about messages?" Articles were cross-posted everywhere which lead to people being annoyed and/or fragmented discussions as participants tried to trim the Newsgroups line. People who were only interested in this specific topic had to wade through the regular articles from the group(s). And the flip side of that: regular readers who weren't particularly interested in the "hot topic" suddenly had their quiet little group invaded by (gasp) outsiders. -- void *Wayne_Mesard(); Mesard@BBN.COM BBN, Cambridge, MA