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!)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
--
--- David Herron
--- ARPA-> ukma!david@ANL-MCS.ARPA
--- UUCP-> {ucbvax,unmvax,boulder,oddjob}!anlams!ukma!david
--- {ihnp4,decvax,ucbvax}!cbosgd!ukma!david
Hackin's in me blood. My mother was known as Miss Hacker before she married!bill@persci.UUCP (09/29/85)
In article <2242@ukma.UUCP> david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) writes: >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 [...] > >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. >------------------------------------------------------------------- >-- >--- David Herron >--- ARPA-> ukma!david@ANL-MCS.ARPA >--- UUCP-> {ucbvax,unmvax,boulder,oddjob}!anlams!ukma!david >--- {ihnp4,decvax,ucbvax}!cbosgd!ukma!david > >Hackin's in me blood. My mother was known as Miss Hacker before she married! David, sorry for the long inclusion, but there are two points: 1. Am I not getting all of net.music.folk? As a "folkie" I eagerly await the one or two posting per week average I see here. Hardly what I would call middle to high volume. Perhaps there is a site somewhere upstream of us that has decided that this group is worthless and has turned it off. 2. A small but not insignificant contributor to article length is.. (I know, it's been said a hundred times before!) long .signature files. I consider 7 lines long (please, this isn't intended to be a flame!). -- William Swan {ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!persci!bill
krahl@druky.UUCP (R.H. Krahl) (09/30/85)
Boy David! This sounds *real* grim. Do I have this right?...To lower the
phone bill, you want to do away with groups that either have low volume or
(in your opinion) low quality????
If a lot of people feel the way you do...I guess the DEATH of the net is near...I hope they don't and it's not.
--
Rich Krahl ..!drutx!druky!krahl
@ AT&T - The Right Choice.
"You can't get what you want..'til you know what you want" -Joe Jackson
DISCLAIMER: The statements I have made in no way reflect the views of
my most humble employer.jeff1@garfield.UUCP (Jeff Sparkes) (09/30/85)
In article <2242@ukma.UUCP> david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) writes: >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. We just went through the same problem, but since we are a computer science department, we decided to keep only computer related groups. The only large groups that we still get are net.sources and net.unix-wizards. We managed to cut out about 75% of our news, the administration is happy, and we realized how much of the news is crap. All the talk about information overload and the net collapsing under it's own weight is apparently true. Jeff Sparkes garfield!jeff1
heiby@cuae2.UUCP (Heiby) (10/02/85)
In article <996@druky.UUCP> krahl@druky.UUCP (R.H. Krahl) writes: >Boy David! This sounds *real* grim. Do I have this right?...To lower the >phone bill, you want to do away with groups that either have low volume or >(in your opinion) low quality???? I think the point that krahl missed is that David posted a list of newsgroups that were candidates for HIS SITE to stop supporting. He is in the process of finding out whether anyone on HIS SITE can make a case for keeping any of the groups. I did the exact same thing on one machine I administer news on a few months ago, cut the disk space used by about 20%, and the space used is currently higher than it was before trimming groups that NO ONE ON MY SITE WANTED. I am administering news on a smaller machine now, as well. The machine has a total of 102Meg of disk space and we get very few groups to start with. Do the news administrators have the right to stop supporting groups that should be mailing lists (low volume) or moderated but aren't (low quality)? You're damn right, we do. If my users can't get their work done because netnews is tying up too much disk space, or too many cycles, or too many hours on the FOUR incoming or ONE outgoing lines on the system, we won't support ANY groups at all. Even in some parts of AT&T, the budget allotment for netnews is ZERO dollars. If krahl wants to pass around a lot of crap with his cycles and dialers, fine. I'll pass, thank you. -- Ron Heiby {NAC|ihnp4}!cuae2!heiby Moderator: mod.newprod & mod.unix AT&T-IS, /app/eng, Lisle, IL (312) 810-6109 "No; my legs are written in a functional programming language." (J. McKie)
david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) (10/02/85)
If you'll remember, I posted (in <2422@ukma.UUCP>) a list of newsgroups that we were thinking of cutting out and asked for comments. Haven't gotten a lot, but thought these two were interesting and representative. First is someone apparently wanting us to keep all newsgroups. In article <996@druky.UUCP>, krahl@druky.UUCP (R.H. Krahl) writes: > Organization: AT&T-ISL - Denver, Colorado > Boy David! This sounds *real* grim. Do I have this right?...To lower the > phone bill, you want to do away with groups that either have low volume or > (in your opinion) low quality???? > If a lot of people feel the way you do... > I guess the DEATH of the net is near...I hope they don't and it's not. > -- > Rich Krahl ..!drutx!druky!krahl > @ AT&T - The Right Choice. Then a sympathizer. In article <3656@garfield.UUCP>, jeff1@garfield.UUCP (Jeff Sparkes) writes: > Organization: Memorial U. of Nfld. C.S. Dept., St. John's > In article <2242@ukma.UUCP> david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) writes: > >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. > We just went through the same problem, but since we are a computer > science department, we decided to keep only computer related groups. > The only large groups that we still get are net.sources and net.unix-wizards. > We managed to cut out about 75% of our news, the administration is happy, > and we realized how much of the news is crap. All the talk about information > overload and the net collapsing under it's own weight is apparently true. > Jeff Sparkes > garfield!jeff1 The first thing I noticed was where these two people are *from*! The one is an AT&T employee and probably doesn't have to worry about his phone bills (:-). The second is from a University and is expressing the exact opinions which have been expressed around here. i.e. Given a limited amount of support for receiving news and a seemingly unlimited supply of news, why is *EVERYTHING* necessary??? Yes, Mr. Krahl, I do want to lower the phone bill by cutting newsgroups. And, no, I won't kill the net by doing so because I'm not asking the net to kill newsgroups, I'm simply intending to cut them locally. On the other hand, if the net were to see this suggestion and agree that all those newsgroups were worthless and needed to be cut I wouldn't cry. What's a poor university to *do*?!?!? -- David Herron, ukma!david@ANL-MCS.ARPA, cbosgd!ukma!david (Soon -- david@UKMA.BITNET, and (hopefully) david@ukma.csnet) 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!"
edward@ukecc.UUCP (Edward C. Bennett) (10/03/85)
I agree with what David is doing, and I'm his downstream site!! Seriously, we aren't trying to kill the net. We just don't want what we don't read. (NO DAVE!! NOT NET.FLAME!!!) -- Edward C. Bennett UUCP: ihnp4!cbosgd!ukma!ukecc!edward /* A charter member of the Scooter bunch */ "Goodnight M.A."
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...