rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (11/01/85)
One of the recurring points in the net.internat discussion is that it was
difficult to find another newsgroup in which the discussions might begin in
order to indicate the need for a new group. The best that anyone seemed to
come up with was net.unix, which is really stretching it--most of the
discussion while net.internat was alive seemed NOT to be OS-related. I
suppose that one can always revert to net.misc as a starting place for any
group--but a lot of people have left net.misc because it's such a
hodgepodge, and it certainly doesn't have a general content that would make
me think to look there for the beginnings of technical discussion.
I wonder if it would work to have a temporary resting-place for groups
whose creation seems to be believable but need some proving. Suppose that
there were a group called net.newgroup (or some such; the name isn't the
important part) and that we try out new groups there for some limited
period (?two weeks or so?--hard to decide given propagation delays). At
the end of a trial period, look at what the traffic has been and decide
whether to can the group, grant it permanent status, make it a moderated
group, or whatever.
There are various problems with this--and some of them are those nasty "Who
decides?" issues that folks so love to flame about. I'm just trying to
figure out a means by which we could try out groups for a while rather than
getting stuck in the all-or-nothing decision. I'd also like to figure out
how to create a group that enters new territory and hence isn't a logical
spinoff of an existing group which carries the traffic during the
"justification period".
If we had some temporary existence for new groups, it would also give us a
chance to get over the initial novelty of the group before we decide it's
worthwhile. Take net.internat as an example--I know that there are a lot
of interesting topics, hard problems, etc. However, it could just as
easily degenerate into nothing but character-set discussions--which are
relevant and important but a minor piece of the whole matter of
internationalization. It would be nice to get a look at it for a while to
see if it could actually fulfill any part of the promise it holds, before
committing a (top-level) group to it.
--
Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086
...At last it's the real thing...or close enough to pretend.