jss@sjuvax.UUCP (J. Shapiro) (11/04/85)
[ Pacman's revenge... ] OK, Folks, it is time to speak up a bit. I have been on the net now for 5 years+, and I have seen it grow from a small set of technical groups to a large consortium of users of diverse interests and diverse needs. I find net.sources.mac extremely useful. It has provided me with programs, shareware and otherwise, which I use almost daily, and it has provided me with access to other people who are writing macintosh software. I am aware that the group is quite large, and I suspect that moderation won't help. Since the beginning of the group, the only software I have seen reposted has been either: 1) macput/macget/xbin -- utilities necessary to upload and download files. 2) packit -- as above 3) munged articles, of which there have been no more than in other groups. 1 and 2 ought to be posted every now and then. Moderation won't help these. Moderation also will not help the reposting problem. Additionally, it is damn near impossible to reply to a commentor in a moderated group, which is needed. In general, the varieties of software I have seen have been: 1) Educational -- Given that a large portion of the net is educational sites, this doesn't seem unreasonable. 2) Utilitarian -- Many of the programs I have seen are utilities for manageing things like Desk Accessories, Fonts, and applications. A Modula-2 compiler was also distributed. While these are certainly not of general interest, they are *very* useful to mac owners. Also, terminal programs. 3) Games -- The games have gotten quite large. I am inclined to think probably too much so. In addition, and perhaps most important of all, net.sources.mac and net.micro.mac have provided me with the addresses of other Mac users who are interested in technical issues related to the mac. They have also been a source of much valued explanation and discussion. Granted, net.sources.mac is not a UNIX oriented group. That is not the purpose of Usenet, contrary to some opinions. The group's volume says for itself that some fairly large portion of the net finds the mac groups useful, and I find the signal-to-noise ratio in these newsgroups unparalleled in *ANY* other newsgroup. I submit that the most important criterion for removal has got to be lack of utility to net users. Net.sources.mac and net.micro.mac have great utility. As to the suggestion that mailing floppies be taken up, Henry you are once in a rare while just plain silly. There is a major difference between a network and floppies. Networks provide user connectivity. I don't already have to know someone has a "Wombat" program to get it. Also, floppy mailers are at best unreliable, and if the argument for general utility holds, impose so much time cost on the sender that most of the stuff we see on net.sources.mac would never get out. This would be a true shame, as most of it is useful. In short, I hope that if it is decided to delete newsgroups, this one be considered with care, as its deletion would be a mistake. Many other groups are of less utility, and size is not the only indicator of cost. Consider what the cost to the users would be of losing these newsgroups, not in terms of dollars, but in terms of lost utility and opportunity. Net.flame seems to me to be a way of allowing grown-ups to be children, and its deletion would not represent to most of us any loss whatsoever. RMgrouping net.sources.mac would be a substantial loss to a large number of people. We cannot force people to use mail to reply under current news. We cannot enforce article size limits under current news. Usenet may well break under its current load, but I hope that interim solutions do not clobber useful groups. Jonathan S. Shapiro Haverford College -- Jonathan S. Shapiro Haverford College "It doesn't compile pseudo code... What do you expect for fifty dollars?" - M. Tiemann