chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (03/28/85)
Two weeks ago I sent out a pair of recommendations on making Usenet a
better network. The first, rewriting the documentation, is in the
preliminary stages-- I hope to have a mailing list working by the end of
the week. If you wish to be part of the working group putting together an
improved set of Usenet documentation, please drop me a line.
The second proposal, renaming all of the groups in a more logical format,
has generated a lot of mail, most of it favorable. A lot of good
suggestions flowed in, and I'm now ready to send out an improved naming
space. I think this is a lot closer to what we want it to be, thanks to the
feedback I've gotten. I'm working on a proposal for implementing this
thing, and it looks feasible-- hopefully the first draft on this will be
out in a few days.
There have been numerous changes-- please look at the list for details.
The general justification for a top level group is generality-- it should
either tie together a series of related topics or have the potential to do
so as the net expands. I've also tried to balance the naming structure a
bit-- for example, we could have put unix under soft (or under os with
eunice, for example) but since Unix is such a large part of the existence
of the net it deserves to be top level. I use the same justification for
games-- it could be shoved under rec, but I don't believe it really belongs
there, because it would overload the rec naming space.
One thing I have done is split 'net.news' into two groups. 'Adm' are the
groups that were set up particularly for the system administrators, and the
groups set up for the people interested in the network were set up in
'usenet'. Hence, net.news.b, usenet bugs, goes to adm, while
net.news.group goes to usenet. I think this will help people who are
interested in working with the net read the stuff they ought to be reading
without having to wade through the stuff the SA's have to worry about.
One thing I've done is try to keep the groups unique to the 14 character
limit that notes and the older braindamaged news systems have. In the
entire naming space, I only had to worry about two groups-- by changing
'issue.religion' to 'issue.faith' I resolved the significance problems
there. the only other place is 'issue.politics' and I don't have a good way
to get around that one. Notes DOES have a workaround for this problem so I
think that as long as we only have one or two problems we don't need to
worry about it-- the 14 character limit will be around for a while, I
guess, but I think this latest naming space shows it simply isn't that big
a problem if we think about what we are doing.
Other changes: crit becomes arts, which clears up a number of problems with
rec as well. blab becomes issue; hw becomes hard; sw becomes soft; plang
becomes prog, I've created a new group 'cs' to handle computer science
related things that are not strictly software or hardware related (such as
arch, education (cse), and research).
Comments are welcome-- It is much improved, but I feel it ins't quite
finished. I'd like to stabilize the naming space so we can get on to
the implementation phase. If you have a suggestion, please mail it to me.
chuq
----
adm (news.adm) [ groups of interesting to system administrators]
adm.b (news.b)
adm.config (news.config)
adm.headers (mail.headers)
adm.msggroup (mail.msggroup)
adm.newsite (news.newsite)
adm.notes (notes)
adm.sa (news.sa)
adm.test (test)
arts
arts.books (books)
arts.books.comics (comics)
arts.mag (mag)
arts.movies (movies)
arts.movies.sw (movies.sw)
arts.music (music)
arts.music.classical (music.classical)
arts.music.folk (music.folk)
arts.music.synth (music.synth)
arts.poems (poems)
arts.sf-lovers (sf-lovers)
arts.theater (theater)
arts.tv (tv)
arts.tv.drwho (tv.drwho)
arts.tv.soaps (tv.soaps)
arts.tv.startrek (startrek)
consumer (consumers)
consumer.invest (invest)
consumer.legal (legal)
consumer.taxes (taxes)
cs [computer science oriented groups]
cs.arch (arch)
cs.arch.works (works)
cs.cog-eng (cog-eng)
cs.education (cse)
cs.research (research)
cs.std
culture
culture.celts (nlang.celts)
culture.greek (nlang.greek)
culture.india (nlang.india)
culture.language (nlang)
culture.roots (roots)
games (games)
games.bridge (rec.bridge)
games.chess (chess)
games.emp (games.emp)
games.frp (games.frp)
games.go (games.go)
games.hack (games.hack)
games.pbm (games.pbm)
games.puzzle (puzzle)
games.rogue (games.rogue)
games.trivia (games.trivia)
games.video (games.video)
hard
hard.dcom (dcom)
hard.info-terms (info-terms)
hard.lan (lan)
hard.lsi (lsi)
hard.periphs (periphs)
issue
issue.abortion (abortion)
issue.faith (religion)
issue.faith.christian (religion.christian)
issue.faith.jewish (religion.jewish)
issue.flame (flame)
issue.origins (origins)
issue.philosophy (philosophy)
issue.politics (politics)
issue.politics.theory (politics.theory) *
micro (micro)
micro.432 (micro.432)
micro.6809 (micro.6809)
micro.68k (micro.68k)
micro.apple (micro.apple)
micro.atari (micro.atari)
micro.cbm (micro.cbm)
micro.cpm (micro.cpm)
micro.hp (micro.hp)
micro.mac (micro.mac)
micro.ns32k (micro.16k)
micro.pc (micro.pc)
micro.ti (micro.ti)
micro.trs-80 (micro.trs-80)
micro.zx (micro.zx)
misc (misc)
misc.rumor
orgs [professional organizations]
orgs.college (college) [still doesn't fit... sigh]
orgs.decus (decus)
orgs.usenix (usenix)
people (social)
people.kids (kids)
people.motss (motss)
people.singles (singles)
people.suicide
people.women (women)
prog (lang)
prog.ada (lang.ada)
prog.apl (lang.apl)
prog.c (lang.c)
prog.f77 (lang.f77)
prog.forth (lang.forth)
prog.lisp (lang.lisp)
prog.mod2 (lang.mod2)
prog.pascal (lang.pascal)
prog.prolog (lang.prolog)
prog.st80 (lang.st80)
rec (rec)
rec.auto (auto)
rec.aviation (aviation)
rec.bicycle (bicycle)
rec.birds (rec.birds)
rec.boat (rec.boat)
rec.coins (rec.coins)
rec.cooks (cooks)
rec.cooks.veg (veg)
rec.cooks.wines (wines)
rec.disc (rec.disc)
rec.garden (garden)
rec.jokes (jokes)
rec.jokes.d (jokes.d)
rec.mcycle (cycle)
rec.nude (rec.nude)
rec.pets (pets)
rec.railroad (railroad)
rec.scuba (rec.scuba)
rec.ski (rec.ski)
rec.skydive (rec.skydive)
rec.travel (travel)
rec.wood (rec.wood)
sci (sci)
sci.astro (astro)
sci.astro.expert (astro.expert)
sci.bio (bio)
sci.crypt (crypt)
sci.math (math)
sci.math.stat (math.stat)
sci.math.symbolic (math.symbolic)
sci.med (med)
sci.physics (physics)
sci.space (space)
sci.space.columbia (columbia)
soft
soft.ai (ai)
soft.emacs (emacs)
soft.eunice (eunice)
soft.graphics (graphics)
soft.text (text)
sources (sources)
sources.bugs (sources.bugs)
sources.games (sources.games)
sources.mac (sources.mac)
sport (sport)
sport.baseball (sport.baseball)
sport.football (sport.football)
sport.hockey (sport.hockey)
sport.hoops (sport.hoops)
tech
tech.analog (analog)
tech.audio (audio)
tech.ham-radio (ham-radio)
tech.photo (rec.photo)
tech.video (video)
unix (unix)
unix.bugs (bugs)
unix.bugs.2bsd (bugs.2bsd)
unix.bugs.4bsd (bugs.4bsd)
unix.bugs.usg (bugs.usg)
unix.bugs.uucp (bugs.uucp)
unix.bugs.v7 (bugs.v7)
unix.wizards (unix-wizards)
usenet (news)
usenet.group (news.group)
usenet.mail (mail)
usenet.net-people (net-people)
usenet.stargate (news.stargate)
wanted (wanted)
wanted.forsale (forsale)
wanted.jobs (jobs)
wanted.jobs.resume
wanted.sources (wanted.sources)
Moved into mod groups:
announce -- moved to mod.annouce
announce.newusers -- moved to mod.announce.newusers
Removed from the network:
followup -- gone completely
general -- gone completely
[ these groups are obsolete-- articles should either be in
a specific group, sent to mod.announce, or posted at last
resort to net.misc]
usoft -- gone completely
[ absorbed into soft, I guess (find a good definition for this group!)]
wobegon -- gone completely
[ rec.music.folk takes a good part of the reason for this to exist.
if it had any volume (it doesn't) I'd suggest rec.radio or
rec.radio.npr]
women.only --- gone completely
[failed experiment-- taken over by mail.feminist and women]
--
Chuq Von Rospach, National Semiconductor
{cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA
Be seeing you!