mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (08/05/85)
In article <480@talcott.UUCP> tmb@talcott.UUCP (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: >Likewise, with the current news software, cross postings do not use up >any significant amount of disk space (they are simply links). The reasons for suppressing CERTAIN cross-postings has never been that it costs disk-space, but that a) certain cross-postings are obviously inappropriate, and b) too many cross-postings are symptomatic of a problem with the newsgroup structure. C Wingate
tmb@talcott.UUCP (Thomas M. Breuel) (08/05/85)
Recently, Gene Spafford (spaf@gatech) has posted messages to several newsgroups with low traffic or very high percentages of cross postings announcing their candidacy for removal. I do not question the accuracy of his statistics, but I do question the consequences and conclusions that he draws (namely the removal of the respective newsgroups). The resources required by all low-traffic newsgroups are insignificant when compared to the resources required by the active newsgroups (or even a single high-volume newsgroup like net.lang.c or net.news). Likewise, with the current news software, cross postings do not use up any significant amount of disk space (they are simply links). I would argue, on the other hand, that low-volume newsgroups with high incidences of cross-postings and very specific topics are desirable rather than unnecessary ballast. They give readers the opportunity to read specifically those topics that they are interested in. It might, for example, be advantageous to split up net.lang.c into several news groups for discussions on standards, style, &c. Newsgroups like net.bugs.v7 and net.games.go have well defined topics and descriptive names. It is not sensible to remove them. Much more important is a renaming of newsgroups like 'net*unix*' or 'net*wanted*', a split-up of high-volume newsgroups like net.lang.c, and the creation of newsgroups for topics which cause frequent postings to inappropriate newsgroups due to lack of a better forum. 'Cleanup activities' like Gene Spafford's just cause lots of unnecessary net traffic and no conceivable gain. Thomas. tmb@talcott