david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- Resident E-mail Hack) (09/24/87)
I'm in the process of writing a summary of the votes which I received
regarding the splitting of rec.music.misc ... In the thinking which
went into doing the summary I've decided that y'all'd like to know
something about how I feel about the newsgroup organization and how I'd
like to see us using it.
First, I like the current organization. It's fairly well organized and
it's easy enough to flesh out the tree as needed, and still keep the
organizational structure in place.
Unlike the old organization we can do a number of interesting things
with the list. We can sort it and have all the related newsgroups near
the same part of the list. We can delete out the lines for any
newsgroup which is below "level n" (i.e. anything more specific than 2
levels .. rec.music is 2 levels) and have a list which gives a general
overview of the net.
We couldn't do that with the old system. With the old system we had
this one monolithic list. It didn't split up well, and related groups
were often spread all over the place.
The .misc groups (in my mind) serve an interesting purpose. They are a
catch-all group for whatever subsection of the net they live in.
Anything within a subsection which isn't already covered should go into
the .misc group. If some discussion in a .misc group starts taking
over, then a new group should be split off and the discussion moved
from the .misc group to the new group.
A place which stands out in my mind which doesn't have a .misc is
comp.unix ... but there's historical reasons in this case. Anyway,
suppose .questions is the .misc group in this case. If lots of people
started saying things about MicroPort Unix then a MicroPort group
(comp.unix.uport for instance) should be created.
"be created" means "volumn is shown, take a vote to make sure the
populace agrees, and if the vote is > n yes votes then create the
group".
Actually, the .misc group isn't strictly necessary as the parent-level
group could also fill the purpose. However, current practice has some
parent-level groups fullfilling a different purpose than being a .misc
group. (I'm thinking of rec.music which is a place where some digest
is sent).
Some parent-level groups are (by current practice) .misc groups and
oughta have sub-groups spun off. I'm thinking of soc.singles, soc.men,
soc.women, and so forth. No, I don't read any of those newsgroups and
have no ideas as to how to split them up, but they oughta be split up
... My roomate aside, I don't see how any sane person could possibly
keep up with soc.singles. I've tried a couple of times and just
couldn't do it...
Sorry to be so long-winded, but it's an important idea ...
Watch for a rec.music.misc summary coming soon in a newsgroup near you!
--
<---- David Herron, Local E-Mail Hack, david@ms.uky.edu, david@ms.uky.csnet
<---- {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<----
<---- Je parle francais comme une vache espagnole.robertd@ncoast.UUCP (Rob DeMarco) (10/02/87)
In article <7328@e.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- Resident E-mail Hack) writes: >... (Descussion on news.group.structures.) >... My roomate aside, I don't see how any sane person could possibly >keep up with soc.singles. I've tried a couple of times and just >couldn't do it... This is also true for talk.bizarre - I use to read that conference but realized it was imposible. There should be a split up - but how? talk.bizarre.saneman? talk.bizarre.jokes? talk.bizarre.wierd? [> Rd -- North Coast Computer Resources(ncoast) - 216-781-6201 (or 781-6202) UUCP:decvax!mandrill!ncoast!robertd Sysop: NEODG (login "sbbs")