[news.groups] The right way to run a trial hierarchy

brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) (11/13/89)

Someone creates trial.foo.bar. After a month, if he thinks trial.foo.bar 
has proven useful, he asks the Namespace Committee to make it into a
real group, foo.bar. The Committee's only job is to keep the namespace
sensible, so that a user can find the right group to read or to post in;
by default all groups pass.

Notice that the trial name includes the entire real name. That lets the
readers decide the right name by deed rather than word. For example,
Richard creates trial.sci.aquaria and Bryce creates trial.rec.aquaria.
After a month, depending on how fish owners have used the groups, one or
both proposers go to the Committee; and either sci.aquaria or rec.aquaria
is created as the trial groups disappear.

The choice of people for the Committee is unimportant; probably Spaf,
Greg, and whoever thinks he's Czar at the moment would suffice.

---Dan

dianeh@gryphon.COM (Diane Holt) (11/13/89)

In <3923@sbcs.sunysb.edu> brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>Richard creates trial.sci.aquaria and Bryce creates trial.rec.aquaria.
>After a month, depending on how fish owners have used the groups, one or
>both proposers go to the Committee; and either sci.aquaria or rec.aquaria
>is created as the trial groups disappear.

And if they both succeed?  Do you create both?  One for discussing color-
coordinating the tint of your goldfish bowl to match the tile of your
bathroom counter, and all the darling little plastic accessories you
can get for it, like treasure chests and stone castles; one to discuss
the latest scientific information regarding developing and maintaining
an ecosystem in which to keep and breed fish?  Or is that too sensible?

Diane Holt
(dianeh@binky.UUCP)

"Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor -- not a logician."

mesard@bbn.com (Wayne Mesard) (11/14/89)

brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>After a month, depending on how fish owners have used the groups, one or
>both proposers go to the Committee; and either sci.aquaria or rec.aquaria
>is created as the trial groups disappear.

Everyone would simply cross-post to both groups.  And a lot of the
volume would undoubtedly be meta-discussions about the name (among other
things).  Not that I don't think this would be an improvement over the
current system.  At least then the users of the group would be shaping
it instead of self-styled net.big-shots.

Maybe each trial group will need a trial.foo.d group, too.

-- 
void *Wayne_Mesard();         Mesard@BBN.COM         BBN, Cambridge, MA