grady@cad.UUCP (Steven Grady) (02/21/86)
It seems a lot of the problem is not so much the posting of
articles to inappropriate newsgroups, which could be solved by
creating a new newsgroup, but the short life span such a group
would have if it were created. Perhaps what is needed is a set
of newsgroups, perhaps net.temp.* or just temp.*, which existed
for the sole purpose of redirecting a temporary surge of articles
from an inappropriate newsgroup. Thus if there were obviously
some interest in a new, not-directly-related subject, say at
least 10 articles posted, the powers-that-be and their friends
(who presumably monitor a large number of newsgroups) could
create a temp newsgroup and suggest everyone post there. The
expiration date could be made fairly short, but if there seemed
to be a continuation of the newsgroup for an unusual amount of
time, a new newsgroup could be created. No one would have reason
to complain, because those who think it should be a real,
permanent newsgroup will definitely have their claims (goals,
hopes, aspirations, whatever) verified or contradicted by the
volume in the group after, say, one month.
I haven't given much thought to this idea (seeing as I
thought of it very recently), but offhand, it seems as though all
the problems (and there were vast numbers of annoyances, great
and small) caused by New Coke, net.bizarre, net.sources.amiga,
copyrights and PD, challenger vs columbia, etc etc, would have
been avoided by judicious creation of temp newsgroups (temp.coke,
temp.bizarre, etc.).
Thoughts, flames, complements?
Steven
...!ucbvax!grady
grady@ingres.berkeley.edugds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner) (02/22/86)
One could always, when posting an article which they think will create a
limited flurry of discussion, direct followups to net.test, or even
junk!
--
It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under.
Greg Skinner (gregbo)
{decvax!genrad, allegra, gatech, ihnp4}!mit-eddie!gds
gds@eddie.mit.edugam@amdahl.UUCP (G A Moffett) (02/23/86)
In article <54@cad.UUCP> grady@cad.UUCP (Steven Grady) writes: > ... Perhaps what is needed is a set > of newsgroups, perhaps net.temp.* or just temp.*, which existed > for the sole purpose of redirecting a temporary surge of articles > from an inappropriate newsgroup.... > ... No one would have reason > to complain, because those who think it should be a real, > permanent newsgroup will definitely have their claims (goals, > hopes, aspirations, whatever) verified or contradicted by the > volume in the group after, say, one month. I think this is a great idea! So much political bru-ha-ha has developed around creating new newsgroups that a convention for ``temporary'' newsgroups would resolve the problem from both sides, in addition to providing public demonstrations of the need or lack of it by such groups. An expected objection here is the addition of work this adds to the News Administrator, who must rememeber to remove the temp newsgroups after a conventional amount of time (say 3 months), but the work there is trivial, and I'm sure a 'rmgroup' would circulate as the time called for it. I think Steven mentioned a time limit of 1 month. I think this is too short and recommend 3 months. By the end of that much time the newsgroup would have either established its need for perminanace or fulfilled the needs of its readers/supporters for the time being. [ This sort of design echos Alvin Toffler's concept of "ad-hocracy" -- establishing political/administrative groups on an as-needed basis, then disposing of them when they are done. I think this is *exactly* what is to be expected in societies where technology makes such relatively rapid change convienient. ] My suggestion for the name of such groups is net.tmp.* (mimicking the standard Unix /tmp file system name). -- Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,seismo,hplabs}!amdahl!gam Inferior people should not be employed.
lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (02/23/86)
My suspicion is that the existence of "temporary" groups would encourage more "junk" postings on random topics. Many persons might think to themselves, "Gee, now that we have TEMPORARY groups, I can send in lots of junk and nobody can complain that I'm clogging up the main groups." But of course the temporary groups would still be taking up transmission and reading time, and would probably find themselves being frequently renewed instead of being allowed to die gracefully when their time is up. Overall, it sounds to me like the temporary groups could actually increase the overall "noise" level on the net, rather than reduce it. Personal opinion, of course. --Lauren--
msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (02/26/86)
Steven Grady proposed the concept of temporary newsgroups. His article's References line connected it to the discussion of net.sources.d. I'm in favor of his proposal, but I think that net.sources.d should be considered a separate issue (and I'm in favor of that proposal too). Supposing that temporary newsgroups are to be created, there remains the question of what to call them. I think a new distribution is the most logical; now that we have "net" and "mod", distributions don't necessarily have to reflect geography but can also classify types of groups. But unfortunately, the history of "mod" also shows us that setting up a new distribution requires hgetting past a lot of net inertia and consequently it takes a long time before everybody that really wants the distribution receives it. Therefore I do not favor "temp.*", though I would like to. But now consider. If we call the temporary groups "net.temp.*", Steven's other proposal, then the creation of a parent group "net.temp" is implied. It would be nice if the parent group had its own purpose. Well, what would that be? Obviously, for discussions too short-lived for even a temporary group. And what does that sound like? Right, "net.misc". Which leads to another possibility: that temporary groups could take the form "net.misc.*". There is even a precedent for this. Well, to me, "net.tmp.wombat"* seems a lot more suggestive than "net.misc.wombat"; but, on the other hand, "net.misc" still seems more suggestive than "net.temp" for the parent; but if we retain "net.misc" and add "net.temp", we have two groups of like purpose. I'm not sure how to resolve this; maybe we can find a hair to split that will distinguish the two groups "net.misc" and "net.temp". Anyway, I'm suggesting that comments on this should be mailed to ucbvax!grady, the proposer, along with your votes on the overall idea. Don't mail to me on this. Mark Brader *I prefer "tmp" to "temp", for obvious reasons.