richard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) (10/18/89)
>Europe (and Australia?) both get sci.all, but don't get soc.all or rec.all -- I had a list of what Australia gets around here someplace, but it seems to have vanished. They don't get all of sci. In fact the list of what they do get is rather bizarre. >>"Serious" topics are topics that concerns our professional life. You have as much chance of defining what constitutes a ``serious'' topic as you do proving the existence of god. You can *believe* anything you want. One thing I never understood in the discussion over .aquaria, was the argument that arose several times: ``sci.aquaria would be okay if you guys were bunch of professional fish breeders''. To my mind that would relegate it to biz. Maybe it's just me, but I thought it was more desirable to furnish information to the everyday {wo}man, at, hopefully, a higher level than one could find on FIDO or BBS's than to professionals who have professional (read ``pay-for'') sources. >Since the renaming, a hierarchy of top level domains has evolved. This >wasn't the original idea, but it seems to have happened anyway. I think the >question we need to answer on the net is really "we have this. what do we do >with it?" > >The hierarchy, as I see it, looks vaguely like: > >comp > sci > rec > misc > soc > talk The thing I realy dislike about this is the uneveness of it. There are 149 comp groups, 76 rec groups, but a very small number of soc, talk, and misc froups. >Based on this, perhaps a better hierarchy based on what we have (if, for >instance, I were to propose a brand new Grand Renaming, which I'm not) would >be a three level hierarchy: > > comp.all > misc.all > talk.all Unfortunately this lumps the soc and rec groups (``less desirable'') in with misc. Misc is sort of unique in that it's pretty high S/N, unlike soc and talk. This has nothing to do with what hierarchy is; misc.men would be equally useless. I wonder though, how many sites get misc that do not get rec? One mans view: comp.unix.* Unix stuff comp.biz.* Computers used in buisess. (not Macs and Amigas) but suns, apollos, IBM pc's. comp.micro.* Home micros comp.sw.* .text, .lang, etc. comp.misc.* Catch all sci.* Physics, biology, math, chemistry. tech.* Tech talk. Technical stuff that used to be in rec or sci. misc.* .legal, .kids, .econ etc. rec.* Horses, football, TV, music. talk.* .bizarre, .men, .abortion (how do you tell them apart, anyway) >>should not forget, there is a good deal of "unserious" material in the >>comp groups too, the most serious of them all. All language and OS >>wars, all uninformed replies etc. Hah! I unsubscribed to comp.sys.amiga because my hard disk works and I don't play games; I have little or no use for .amiga. Which sort of makes: >Comp.all (which actually has it's own set of hierarchies) is >the primary purpose of the net, largest distribution (and volume). ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ dubious for many of the comp groups. >>Good point! If you got away with all the garbage to talk or alt, *then* >>soc could be considered a serious domain. But don't try to tell me >>that soc *today* is serious. Don't try to tell me that alt *today* is garbage. The S/N ratio is much higher in most alt groups than on the mainstream net as a whole. -- Help wipe out BBQ lighter fluid in your lifetime richard@gryphon.COM decwrl!gryphon!richard gryphon!richard@elroy.jpl.NASA.GOV