david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) (09/27/85)
Because of high phone bills and angry glares from our higher-up's,
we've been having to decide which newsgroups can be thrown away and
which should be kept. (I'm marking this to Followup-To to net.news,
it's being cross posted just for general interest).
This started with some angry glares following a high phone bill.
We took a look at the top 25 newsgroup list and found that about 45%
of the traffic listed there was of questionable quality and need.
I wrote my 'subscribers' shell script and set it running for awhile
to gather data for me, and the following list is the result.
This list has been posted to the local newsgroups and we'll have
some local voting and discussion about it, with a final decision being
reached in a week or two. BTW, I've purposely put too many newsgroups
on this list because I'm hoping to jog some people into action.
For instance, net.bizarre actually has enough readers but is of
such low quality that I don't think anybody will miss it, and is
of such high volume that it'll make a big dent in our phone bills
if we throw it away.
Why am I posting a local administrative matter to the net
as a whole? I'm hoping to raise consciousness on the net, and
start some general conversation about the usefulness of these groups.
Hopefully this will be the only large posting (And, please people,
don't quote the entire thing!)
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net.abortion -- A high volume low readership newsgroup.
net.aviation -- Nobody here reads it.
net.bicycle -- ditto.
net.bio -- Few readers.
net.bizarre -- LOW QUALITY, HIGH VOLUME.
net.books -- High volume. However, it does have a few readers.
net.college -- Few readers.
net.cse -- Few readers.
net.cycle -- NO readers.
net.eunice -- NO readers.
net.flame -- HIGH volume, LOW quality.
net.games, net.games.emp, net.games.frp, net.games.go, net.games.hack,
net.games.pbm, net.games.rogue, net.games.trivia, net.games.video,
net.games.chess, net.games.board --
Very little reason to have it around. Generally low readership.
Reasonably high volume, especially as a group.
net.garden -- NO readers.
net.ham-radio, net.ham-radio.packet -- Few readers.
net.jokes, net.jokes.d -- VERY HIGH VOLUME, VERY LOW QUALITY.
net.kids -- High volume. Average readership.
net.legal -- ditto.
net.micro.atari, net.micro.cbm, net.micro.ti -- cbm and ti have NO
readers, atari has only one.
net.misc.coke -- Actually, an rmgroup should be sent out on this one.
Very little reason to have it in the first place.
net.motss -- HIGH VOLUME, generally hard to justify.
net.music, net.music.classical, net.music.folk,
net.music.gdead, net.music.synth -- Middle to high volume in all of them
with few readers.
net.nlang.africa -- Few readers.
net.origins -- HIGH volume and only one reader.
net.pets -- One reader but only middling volume.
net.philosophy -- High volume.
net.poems -- Few readers.
net.politics, net.politics.theory -- HIGH VOLUME, hard to justify.
net.puzzle -- Few readers.
net.railroad -- NO readers.
net.rec, net.rec.birds, net.rec.boat, net.rec.bridge, net.rec.nude,
net.rec.photo, net.rec.scuba, net.rec.ski, net.rec.skydive, net.rec.wood --
As a group it's high volume. Has generally low readership.
net.religion, net.religion.christian, net.religion.jewish -- High volume,
few readers, and generally hard to justify.
net.roots -- Few readers.
net.sf-lovers -- High volume, low quality, and few readers.
net.singles -- ditto.
net.social -- ditto.
net.sport, net.sport.baseball, net.sport.football, net.sport.hockey,
net.sport.hoops --
Like rec and games. As a group, high volume. But here
we have NO readers.
net.suicide -- Few readers.
net.travel -- Middle volume, few readers.
net.tv, net.tv.drwho, net.tv.soaps -- High volume and few readers.
net.tv.soaps has NO readers.
net.veg -- Few readers.
net.wines -- NO readers.
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--
--- David Herron
--- ARPA-> ukma!david@ANL-MCS.ARPA
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Hackin's in me blood. My mother was known as Miss Hacker before she married!tim@k.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA (Tim Maroney) (10/03/85)
I find this totally worthless. The sampling of readership is taken from a very small population. The decisions on what is or is not "hard to justify" are completely and absolutely subjective. I often got the feeling, while looking through the list, that "hard to justify" meant "I, Herron, don't have any interest in the subject matter, and it isn't about computers, so...." I fail to see any value in this. -=- Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University, Networking ARPA: Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K uucp: seismo!cmu-cs-k!tim CompuServe: 74176,1360 audio: shout "Hey, Tim!"
chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (10/05/85)
In article <581@k.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA> tim@k.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA (Tim Maroney) writes: >I find this totally worthless. The sampling of readership is taken from a >very small population. The decisions on what is or is not "hard to justify" >are completely and absolutely subjective. I often got the feeling, while >looking through the list, that "hard to justify" meant "I, Herron, don't >have any interest in the subject matter, and it isn't about computers, >so...." I fail to see any value in this. Actually, when you're talkinga about removing availability of groups from a small population, it makes sense to sample that population. If you're talking about removing groups from a large population, you need a more scientific approach. It WAS interesting, though to compare his stuff to what is happening out here in the bay area where people are doing readership surveys on a regional basis... I found it rather suprising which groups don't seem to have a lot of following on a pretty wide ranging basis. -- :From under the bar at Callahan's: Chuq Von Rospach nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA {decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4,pyramid}!nsc!chuqui If you can't talk below a bellow, you can't talk...