spaf@gatech.UUCP (06/24/84)
In summary: don't nuke net.general -- and change the newsgroup
structure.
I'm just now catching up on my news (almost 2800 articles in 2 weeks!)
and this discussion has generated some interesting points. However,
the only reasons put forth by the "nuke net.general" faction seem to be
along the lines of
"I don't subscribe to it. No one I know subscribes to it.
Besides, it isn't what we intended it to be."
Well, I subscribe to it. And to net.followup. And net.misc. And about
30 other groups. I have been reading them for over 18 months. And
there are items in there I find useful now and then. I can't be the
only one reading the groups -- look at the volume of posted material.
We're seeing an evolutionary definition of what the groups are for
which seems stronger than the "creationist" published definition of the
group (maybe I should post this to net.origins :-).
The point I'm trying to make is: the groups are being used. If you
don't want to read 'em, unsubscribe. I agree that they could be
combined into one large group of just general content. As cepu!scw
noted, we should probably remove net.misc and direct all of its traffic
to net.general, instead. Maybe we should combine net.followup with
net.general, too. We need a general-interest, non-specific group for
postings. If we remove net.general, all of that traffic is going to go
somewhere else (maybe we should use net.wobegon, Chuq?).
The point has also been made that there are a number of *.general
groups in existence. We should keep net.general for compatability's
sake. For instance, here we have "atl.general" and "ga.general"
newsgroups. The kinds of articles that appear in those groups are of
general nature, if not always of general interest. That is also how
most people perceive "net.general", I believe.
net.announce should be changed to mod.announce to accurately reflect
its true nature. Due to its single-source nature, this should be easy
to accomplish.
Now for a radical proposal:
We've had a lot of discussion in this group (and others) about the
structure of the news and the difficulty of changing the status quo.
Personally, I think most of it isn't correct. I think we could pull
off a wholesale change in the news structure with only a couple of
weeks of minor confusion, if even that. We have the news and mail as
major tools, we only need to use them properly. Let me propose Spaf's
solution to the net debate (I so enjoy entropy):
1) Decide on an altered newsgroup structure. No timidity
here. Merge net.general, net.misc and net.followup. Move a
bunch of groups under net.sci. Create a couple of new
subgroups under net.wanted, remove net.wobegon, create a
bunch of "usa." and "world." groups, or whatever else it
takes to come up with a logical topic structure (WITHOUT
worrying about how different it may be from the current
structure).
2) Publicize the new structure in a mass posting to all
the effected and appropriate groups. Set a date for a
changeover. Communicate directly with the SAs at the
backbone sites, and maybe at the first level out from the
backbone and make sure they have the details.
3) For 2-4-? weeks, have the new structure in parallel with
the current groups. Encourage all of our enlightened
netters to post to BOTH the current groups and the new
groups, as appropriate.
4) On a pre-announced day (say, July 23, which my J. C. Duffy
calendar lists as the beginning of "Caution-to-the-Winds"
week), have all the SAs at backbones, etc. send out rmgroup
messages on the groups which are in the current
configuration but not the new structure. Also, post a major
notice to everywhere appropriate as to the change.
Once this is done, postings to the old groups won't go very far since
all the backbone sites (and others) won't have the groups anymore. The
few week changeover period will make sure that the people have time to
get adjusted to the change, and that the groups don't start out empty.
If we start now, we'll probably be able to pull it off before the fall
season starts at most campuses. Communication and co-ordination are a
great asset to us all, but we have to use it. We'll have a more
logical structure in place which we can PLAN out ahead of time, and
structure with an eye to future growth and based on past experience. I
fear that the net is growing and changing at a rate much too fast for
the kind of graceful, evolutionary change that Adam defends. The
situation is not going to get better on its own, nor is continuing to
stand around and nod our heads in agreement about the state of Usenet
going to cause the necessary changes to occur.
Well? Comments? Flames? Kudos?
Oh, and a final note, could we refrain from using the term "nuke"
anymore, please? If we nuke net.wobegon, for instance, I don't want to
have to deal with any radioactively-mutated net.women running amok in
my /usr/spool/news directory as a result of the fallout (if you know
what I mean, and I'm sure you do).
--
Off the Wall of Gene Spafford
The Clouds Project, School of ICS, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
Phone: (404) 894-6169, (404) 894-6170 [messages]
CSNet: Spaf @ GATech ARPA: Spaf%GATech.CSNet @ CSNet-Relay.ARPA
uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,hplabs,ihnp4,masscomp,ut-ngp}!gatech!spaf
...!{rlgvax,sb1,uf-cgrl,unmvax,ut-sally}!gatech!spafwoods@hao.UUCP (06/26/84)
I agree with most of Gene's radical proposal. We clearly need *some* group for
general purpose items. It never occured to me to change the charter of
net.general, but now that I've read all the articles on the subject, I think
we have no choice. We can't remove net.general (I wanted to type "nuke" so
badly! :-) , but we *can* get rid of net.misc and followup, put all those
articles in net.general, and use net/mod.announce for the purpose net.general
was originally intended for. It seems clear to me that there are too many
ignorant bozos posting to the net (I may be a bozo, but at least I'm not
ignorant! :-) for a group such as net.general was intended to be to function
properly without moderation. Obviously, Mark Horton saw all this coming when
he created net.announce in the first place. The only place I disagree, Gene,
is in your optimstic estimate how difficult such a change would be. There are
many, many casual users out there who don't read net.news or any of it's
subgroups. Is it really possible to post an article to *every* group? I think
that is what it will take to make such a radical change possible. I do agree,
however, that we have to do *something*. Growth is fine, as long as
it's direction is controlled. I've been saying for a long time that we *need*
more of a tree-like newsgroup structure. What Gene is proposing is clearly a
move in that direction. The only question is, is it really possible? I think
maybe we should at least give it a try.
--Greg
--
{ucbvax!hplabs | allegra!nbires | decvax!stcvax | harpo!seismo | ihnp4!stcvax}
!hao!woods
"... brave the storm to come, for it surely looks like rain"
NUKE NET.GENERAL!!!alb@alice.UUCP (Adam L. Buchsbaum) (06/27/84)
No, we cannot get rid of net.followup without getting rid of net.general. As you may recall, there was such a great amount of followups to net.general items that the software was designed to automatically post net.general followups to net.followup; that is net.followup's sole purpose: to hold followups for net.general. If you remove net.followup, you will break the software.
robert@erix.UUCP (06/28/84)
>Now for a radical proposal: > >We've had a lot of discussion in this group (and others) about the >structure of the news and the difficulty of changing the status quo. >Personally, I think most of it isn't correct. I think we could pull >off a wholesale change in the news structure with only a couple of >weeks of minor confusion, if even that. We have the news and mail as >major tools, we only need to use them properly. Let me propose Spaf's >solution to the net debate (I so enjoy entropy): > I whole-heartedly agree. If something is to be done to tidy up the newsgroups mess then it must be a radical change, otherwise it will only be delaying the inevitable crash. Removing a few groups will not help in the long run. > 1) Decide on an altered newsgroup structure. No timidity > here. Merge net.general, net.misc and net.followup. Move a > bunch of groups under net.sci. Create a couple of new > subgroups under net.wanted, remove net.wobegon, create a > bunch of "usa." and "world." groups, or whatever else it > takes to come up with a logical topic structure (WITHOUT > worrying about how different it may be from the current > structure). Definitely! Use the names of the groups to show where the messages will br distributed to. In Europe we have a eunet, create a usa or na for groups that should not cross the oceans and use world, or net, for groups that is to be sent everywhere. This would help us in Europe as there have been many complaints about bringing over groups that contain a lot of "local" american information. A radical change in the groups structure would definitely help to alleviate this problem. Robert Virding @ L M Ericsson, Stockholm
cds@qtlon.UUCP (Chris Seabrook) (07/19/84)
I agree that something drastic must be done soon, so lets go to it.
Any volunteers to supervise thus lot ???
--
Chris Seabrook
UUCP: {ENGLAND}!ukc!qtlon!cds
qusavx!qtlon!cds
PHONE: +44 1 637 7061julian@deepthot.UUCP (Julian Davies) (07/19/84)
A radical reorganization is fine by me, but I still want to
see a 'root' distinction made between the two major classes
of newsgroups -- (1) technically-oriented ones;
and (2) others. Class (1) includes unix-wizards, bugs,
mail, etc etc. I.e., the "net" root should be split into
two. I haven't seen any reaction to my previous couple of
poastings urging the need for this; maybe the messages
didn't get out, or maybe noone cares. It will be increasingly
important (I think) for those sites where telephone bills
come to be questioned.
Julian Davies
(the guy who pays some of the bills here)
{uwo|deepthot}!julianphil@amd.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (07/21/84)
> A radical reorganization is fine by me, but I still want to > see a 'root' distinction made between the two major classes > of newsgroups -- (1) technically-oriented ones; > and (2) others. Hear hear! I've been wanting this too. -- The guy who dies with the most toys wins. Phil Ngai (408) 982-6554 UUCPnet: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra,intelca}!amd!phil ARPAnet: amd!phil@decwrl.ARPA
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (07/22/84)
A while back I took a net survey about whether to get rid of
net.general. This is a summary of the results.
Get rid of net.general:
In favor: 61
Opposed: 22
Get rid of net.followup:
In favor: 17
Opposed: 6
(obviously many people didn't have an opinion)
There were 6 people who thought the traffic would just move
to net.announce - these people didn't realize that net.announce
is moderated and the software enforces this.
There were 4 people who didn't understand what all the fuss
was about because they felt net.general is a very low volume
newsgroup. These people all subscribe to high volume newsgroups
like net.unix-wizards and net.cooks.
Eleven people raised serious issues that need consideration,
or made good points. Here are brief summaries of the issues.
My comments are in brackets.
(1) There should be some "wide access" newsgroup where things that
desire a wide audience but aren't really that important can go.
One way of viewing this is to rename net.general something else.
Another approach is to distribute the traffic among several
newsgroups, such as net.misc, net.wanted, and specific newsgroups.
[I propose that this traffic go into net.wanted, which should be
subdivided into a half dozen or so subgroups.]
(2) There is interest in having work-related and non-work-related
divisions. This was brought up at Usenix and soundly voted down
as having almost no support, but several people have mentioned
it on the net, including some from Europe, which is spending a lot
more money than we. The advantage to this is it makes it easier for
sites that only want "work-related" groups to get them (as the
news subscription lines approach buffer overflow.) The disadvantages
are (1) someone has to choose what is and isn't "work related"
and it won't be right for everybody, and (2) it will make it
easier to only get work-related stuff, which in turn may cause
some sites to cut things off that they wouldn't have otherwise.
[There is a discussion going on right now on a private mailing
list about a Usenet newsgroup reorganization. It is set up to
divide the current net.all into six categories: Leisure,
Discussion, Net Administration, Comp Sci, Applications and
Sciences, and General Info. The current topic of discussion
is Brad Templeton's "KNews" based on Keywords (a good idea but
with no software written or forthcoming). When this discussion
reaches a conclusion, the result will be presented to the net
as a proposal for reorganization (I must emphasize that no decision
has been made and the debate should not start until you get the
proposal and read it.)]
(3) One person feels that net.announce should contain only short
messages, with a pointer elsewhere if necessary. [I, being the
moderator, disagree, but if others feel this way or think the
current situation is better, I'd like to hear by mail.]
(4) The following analogy:
Mis-use of net.general path through the flower bed
---------------------- = ---------------------------
"real" net users head gardener of the park
The author goes on to suggest that we pave net.general for what
it has become and create another group for the others. (Whether
net.announce+net.wanted is sufficient for this isn't clear.)
[The problem here is that all.general,all.announce is in the
default path of lots of news implementations out there, and all
the people who don't know enough to unsubscribe from net.general
will get all this trash. Based on the stats Rick Adams posts, I
don't think we can depend on people to upgrade their software
to take net.general out of the default subscription.]
(5) A moderated newsgroup may not be an open enough forum for important
but controversial subjects (e.g. the transcripts of Tim Maroney.)
[Very true - I probably never would have let even a pointer to
this stuff through, as I don't think it belonged on Usenet. Of
course, this is why we have unmoderated newsgroups. Certainly
neither net.announce nor net.wanted would have been appropriate here,
perhaps net.sources with a pointer in net.news.]
(6) There is still a need for a newsgroup for announcements and items
of interest to "nearly everyone" (as opposed to "everyone", the
current charter of net.announce.) [I claim that something that
should be of interest to "nearly everyone" belongs in net.announce,
you can always use your 'n' key.]
(7) A claim is made that discussions should only take place in one
newsgroup, and that the followup command should only let one
newsgroup go on the followup. [I realize that some discussions get
out of hand when they start in 5 groups, 2 of which are
appropriate, and take off, boring the inhabitants of the other 3.
But if you forbid multiple newsgroups, you see people posting the
same announcement umpteen times to umpteen newsgroups, and there's
no way to prevent it from showing up to each person in each
newsgroup. People mostly do this for announcements, to get wide
circulation, and it's when the discussion takes off that it gets
annoying - I guess this was the motivation for restricting
followups to one newsgroup.]
(8) A feeling that overall traffic won't go down, it will just move
to other groups. [Good! This is the whole point - we're not
trying to cut phone bills here, but protect users who are being
offered this junk by default and don't know any better. I doubt
net.general accounts for a significant fraction of the phone bills,
except for that 4.2BSD review I saw today, but it does account for
a significant fraction of the time of casual readers.]
(9) It's hard to change the subscriptions of all the people that are
out there and really WANT net.general, if it gets renamed.
(10) Another European suggesting that we create world.all. [In a related
comment today, someone suggested that the default distribution be
only within your state. Personally I don't think there should be
a default distribution, or maybe just one for general-purpose or
high volume newsgroups.]
(11) Have someone volunteer to sift through net.general for candidates
for net.announce. [Fine, but I don't have the time. If someone
wants to volunteer...]
In summary, it's obvious (to me at least) that we should get rid
of net.general and replace it with something else. It isn't obvious
that we want to get rid of net.followup, as many people didn't address
that, and I suspect their opinion might change depending on the exact
nature of the solution to net.general.
Let's look at the reorganization proposal when it comes out, and if that
doesn't happen, we can look at less radical ways to move net.general.
Mark Hortonlmc@denelcor.UUCP (07/22/84)
Ah, but where is the dividing line you propose? Obviously, you want to separate net.bugs from net.jokes, but what of net.micro? Net.work is "technical" to me, but is it technical to Mayfield High School (sorry, just an example)? I have made a dicotomy at the request of my management in the active file, so that technical groups are read first, then the others, but even in my relatively homogeneous environment I've had flames. And you're going to tell me I'm wrong, that net.usenix is not technical, and if my management says "no non-technical subjects" then I won't be able to see it? And don't waffle on my examples; the net has subjects which would beg a hairsplitter. There is no possible separation that will please even a simple majority of net sites (let alone users). Set up your own list of unwanted newsgroups and communicate it to your feed(s); I'm sure they will be more than happy to cooperate. -- Lyle McElhaney (hao,brl-bmd,nbires,csu-cs,scgvaxd)!denelcor!lmc
julian@deepthot.UUCP (Julian Davies) (07/27/84)
The list of what we want is so long the software cannot handle it, and
it is next to impossible to maintain.
Actually, I'd be fairly happy to take everything EXCEPT for a few
high-volume non-technical groups, specifically net.politics,
net.flame, net.misc net.followup net.jokes net.singles net.religion.
net.sci-fi if it is active: I'd have to check.
I think that is about it... many of the groups have sufficiently low
average traffic that it doesn't make any significant difference to
take them.
From one point of view, I'd like to be able to take all those
things. I have a theory that being able to read lighter or diverting
stuff on the net helps keep programmers sane (sometimes). But..
Julian Davies
{deepthot|uwo}!julianchuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq) (08/05/84)
I've seen a number of comments on why we SHOULD stop forwarding a number of
groups that I'd like to take the other position for a moment.
All of the groups, even net.flame, net.jokes, and the other 'useless'
newsgroups, have their purpose. there are two that stick out in my mind:
1) It keeps the junk out of the other groups. Well, mostly, but we can't
police everyone. If we didn't have net.jokes, every Unix joke in the
world would end up in net.unix-wizards instead. Do we really want to
hear how many DEC repairmen it takes to change a flat tire, ad nauseum?
If we don't give people an outlet for their recreation, they will create
their own, and no software or policing action will solve it.
2) If we do away with the 'useless' groups we will lose a number of net
users as well. I know that if I didn't have net.singles or net.sf-lovers
around for my spare time I'd be a lot less willing to put in the time
and effort on the technical subjects and working on fixing and improving
the network software itself. I know I'm not alone in this feeling,
either.
The thing that worries me about the whole restructuring idea is that it
makes it TOO easy for people to arbitrarily cut off sections of the net. I
agree that it is inappropriate to carry all of the net to certain areas,
but the decisions need to be made on a group by group basis. Do your users
use net.jokes? no? Well, how about the sites you feed? no? Then don't pass
it along! If we cut the net into net.techincal and net.non-technical I am
afraid that many sites will simply cut off net.non-techincal without really
thinking about it. The net will lose a number of very intelligent people
who will no longer have access to subjects that are of interest to them.
Some of them will also stop reading the rest of it, and we will lose them
completely (A mind is too valuable a resource to waste...). Others will
simply take their postings to what is available, and we will find some
places awash with 'inappropriate' postings that simply can't go where they
belong because they aren't available to the poster. At best I think it will
cripple the network, at worst it might kill it. I personally don't want to
see that happen
--
From the depths of the Crystal Cavern: Chuq Von Rospach
{amd,decwrl,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4}!nsc!chuqui nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA
Dreams, dreams, enchanter! Gone with the harp's echo when the strings fall
mute; with the flame's shadow when the fire dies. Be still, and listen.