weemba@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P Wiener) (06/27/87)
I will collect votes on any of the following proposals. I will ignore
all posted votes, so don't bother. If your vote bounced, that's tough
--enough other votes *will* get through so I'll have some idea of what
netters might want.
news.software or news.usenet
news.groups.d/news.groups.new
talk.politics.mideast
usa.elections
rec.arts.misc
talk.misc
Most of these proposals refer to existing traffic within existing group(s).
My own belief is that all large newsgroups should be split up semi-automat-
ically. I'm not kidding myself that naifs will get any better at finding
the correct newsgroup--but it's nice to be able to *tell* someone where to
post, as opposed to sit in disgust as your favorite newsgroup turns into
sludge.
For example, I do not read soc.singles often. Size has a large part to do
with it. Splitting it up into soc.singles.{dating,party,relations,misc,???}
seems like it might make it more bearable. I am not collecting votes on
this--if a regular reader wants to come up with a more intelligent split
he can do so. (Of course, the volume and sheer lack of direction just
might be what attracts people to the group in the first place. I wouldn't
know.)
--
[In following up for *discussion* only--I'm repeating that for the slow
of mind and fast of finger out there--please edit down the parenthesized
part of the subject (news,pol,misc) to which types you are replying to.]
--
news.misc is a home for two kinds of discussions that usually have little
to do with each other. The first is of the nuts-and-bolts sort about rn
and uucp and the future topology of the net and so on. The second is the
more inflammatory USENET vs the real world, from issues of censorship and
legal responsiblity to accusations that the net.gods are really vicious
power hungry electronic toads. I think separating the two topics could be
quite popular.
I am proposing a new group: NEWS.USENET or NEWS.SOFTWARE, meant just
for the technical questions. The former name is more accurate; the
latter fits in the existing hierarchy.
news.groups gets two kinds of discussions--new group proposals, argu-
ments, and announcements, and existing newsgroup meta-discussions,
like the recent moderated sources ruckus.
I am proposing splitting this group in two, giving us NEWS.GROUPS.NEW
and NEWS.GROUPS.D. (Or perhaps giving us just one of them, leaving
the current news.group for the other topic.)
I don't think anyone cares too much about this mixture of topics, but
it might be nice to have a separate catchall home for metadiscussions.
--
Mideast discussions are on another rampage. I don't think they will
go away for a long time. They are filling talk.politics.misc and
soc.culture.jewish to what I find are unbearable degrees. It strikes
me as a particularly endless hole.
I am proposing TALK.POLITICS.MIDEAST for all these discussions for the
future. Form it so that I and perhaps others can unsubscribe. It
would have an odor attached to it somewhat like talk.abortion--let
them scream at each other.
An obvious proposal is USA.ELECTIONS. While in some sense this topic
is covered and discussed within misc.headlines and talk.politics.misc,
I think it would be best to isolate it separately, and guarantee that
our friends in Europe and Australia etc are not bothered. We as might
as well form it now, since it's bound to increase in popularity over
the next year.
[I should point out that contrary to the usual characterization of
talk.* groups, which I still find unsatisfactory, the politics ones
tend to have goodly chunks of facts, and provide a unique X-ray of the
country that the usual news sources just don't come close to providing.
But I'm finding the rehashing of who to blame in the Mideast a waste
of good groups.]
--
A few .misc seem to be missing from the original re-organization. I
do not think it should even be requested that these groups form; the
logical arrangement of the net requires it. I would like to see
REC.ARTS.MISC already. It would have been a perfect home, for example,
for the interactive fiction discussions now running in misc.misc, and
it will provide a home for discussing the other arts when they come up,
or discussions of theory that occasionally do not fit in rec.arts.*
groups that well.
A genuine REC.GAMES.MISC is needed. The existing group is really
REC.GAMES.COMP, none of which I and I suspect many others care about.
The suggestions that the proposed rec.gambling make a home in the
.misc group were entirely worthless, given the reality of the current
misorganization. (I am not collecting votes on this, since I keep
seeing sporadic logical suggestions that are completely ignored. I
think renaming existing groups is a lot harder than forming new ones
--the latter task actually has *rules* that are to be followed!)
TALK.MISC. Now there's a group I'd like to see. Where, for example,
could one tell the voluminous "least favorite phrases" posters to
move to? Nowhere. Why is talk.religion.misc stuck with discussions
about sociology and psychology? There's nowhere else to move them to,
although certain aspects--are they science?--have found a happy home
in sci.philosophy.tech.
The theory of .misc is that there's *always* a group of last resort
within a given top-level category. One of them is conspicuously
missing here. Notice, too, the logical problem in my trying to
*form* such .misc groups. There is no real existing traffic that I
can point to, just repeated transients that annoy other groups. Nor
can I follow the intent of the .misc scheme in the first place--it's
missing in the cases I've mentioned, for crying out loud.
I am aware that talk.misc *might* degenerate into an ersatz talk.flame.
Well, fine, you can always not carry it at your site. Surprise,
surprise, surprise. Flex your phone bills, why don't some of you?
ARPA: weemba@brahms.Berkeley.EDU Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA
UUCP: {cbosgd,sun,dual,decwrl,decvax,ihnp4,hplabs,...}!ucbvax!brahms!weemba