woods (03/20/83)
I for one disagree with Wayne. Just because there has been no discussion of
a subject in net.misc (or wherever), does not necessarily mean it doesn't
warrant a group. I for one stopped reading net.misc months ago because the
large volume of articles is too much for me to keep up with. I simply don't
have the time. I suspect there are lots of others like me as well.
GREG
ucbvax!hplabs!hao!woods
menlo70!hao!woods
harpo!seismo!hao!woods
decvax!brl-bmd!hao!woodsab3@pucc-h (Darth Wombat) (02/03/84)
A quick word or two about newsgroups under consideration:
1. net.religion.jewish? WHY? Net.religion is full of flames anyway,
why spread them out?
2a. net.records -> net.music. Yes, let's do it and get it over with.
2b. net.music.* NO! There aren't enough articles to warrant it.
Most folks are going to wind up subscribing to all the subgroups anyway.
Finally, a sore point: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH HITTING THE "N" KEY?
If you can't stand to see articles about ketchup, speeding, creationism,
or whatever, and if those articles are clearly labelled as such, how long does
it take to skip said articles?
If they're NOT labelled correctly, flame at the author; creating
more newsgroups will not solve *this* problem.
And, especially for those of you who read news on "company" time--
like I do-- if you're reading a non-work-related newsgroup, what possible
grounds do you have for complaining about the submissions there, since you're
wasting your company's, not your, time reading them?
I'm not trying to make excuses for the delta-minus semi-morons who
post silly inquiries to net.general; I'm trying to point out how fatuous I
perceive all this complaining about an {essentially free} service to be
at times.
Good grief, when you read a newspaper you skip the {un-interesting,
disgusting, boring, etc} articles without complaining, don't you?
Sorry for the flame, but I remember the days before Netnews, when
we were all isolated in our little Unix worlds...now we have a wonderful
tool for communicating information and we use half of it to bitch about
the other half.
Looking for my asbestos mittens,
--
"Go ahead...make my day."
Darth Wombat
{ allegra, decvax, ihnp4, harpo, seismo, teklabs, ucbvax } !pur-ee!rskwoods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) (02/06/84)
You say, why not always use the "n" key? I say, Why not create subgroups? I
really do not see why people are objecting so strongly to the creation of
subgroups. Why *should* I have to use my "n" key so much? Why *not*
create a subrgroup for classical music so I don't have to "n" all those
articles? Most of those opposed to this have said something to the effect
that "I think people should be exposed to a diversity of articles".
The fact is, most people who don't know a lot about classical music
(like me) automatically "n" things that have "Bach" in the title. We simply
do not have time to wade through all the articles about things we have
marginal interest in. I am certain that this concept applies equally to those
who like classical and hate rock. Isn't that the purpose of having newsgroups
in the first place, to avoid that sort of thing? Oh well, I plan to respect
the opinion of the majority. At this point, it looks like net.records
is dead meat, but people oppose subgroups of net.music . I must admit,
I am bitterly disappointed. I don't understand why people do not want
to take advantage of modern technology. But apparently, God has spoken.
I will wait another couple of days, just in case there are long loops
even for a backbone site like us, but I wouldn't suggest posting anything
to net.records if I were you.
GREG
--
{ucbvax!hplabs | allegra!nbires | decvax!kpno | harpo!seismo | ihnp4!stcvax}
!hao!woodsgeoff@proper.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) (02/06/84)
"Besides, what the hell is wrong with hitting the N key?" Darth Wombat Well, Darth, it's like this. I read news at 1200 baud, long distance from LA to San Francisco, on my own time and money. The 1200 baud is only because I borrowed a modem from work; my own mode is 300 baud (that's what I could afford). Every time 'readnews' prints a header it takes three to five seconds; it takes me another two to three to decide whether I want to see the article and hit 'n'. If I say yes and the article is over 16 lines, I also have to pay several seconds while the San Francisco system loads 'more' for me. Multiply this by the 50-100 articles that are posted weekly in an active newsgroup like net.music, and you will see that I pay a lot of $$$ hitting the 'n' key and looking at the first 24 lines of articles I didn't really want to see but that had poor subject lines. (Yes, I can flame at the authors, but that's not a cure--Usenet is big and grows rapidly. I have no way to FORCE Joe Schmuck to post subject lines that are relevant. Even if he tries, I will inevitably misunderstand at least occasionally). In the case of net.music, where there is a clear subdivision, creation of a new newsgroup will help immensely. True, net.music.classical will not get large numbers of postings, especially at the beginning--that's EXACTLY the point! I do not want to wade through endless discussions of the Circle Jerks or whoever to get to the one intelligent discussion of Shostakovich. To take your comment to its extreme, why not just have a single giant newsgroup and let people type "n" to every one of the thousands of articles that are posted weekly? I trust the answer is obvious.
kre@ucbvax.ARPA (Robert Elz) (07/27/85)
In article <629@gatech.CSNET>, spaf@gatech.CSNET (Gene Spafford) writes: > Net.bizarre should never have been created. The proper procedure for > creating a new newgroup were not followed. For the information > of our readers, the procedure is: > 1) Propose a new group in "net.news.group" and related, existing groups > 2) Poll the readership for comments > 3) Establish that there is/would be sufficient traffic > 4) Based on responses, create the group. I would like to suggest that those steps should normally be followed in the order 3 1 2 4 That is, first get the traffic. No matter how interesting or useful articles on some topic might be, there is no point making a new group if no-one has anything to say about it. The best way to get a new subject of discussion going is probably to start it - pick the "most appropriate" group, and say something. If there are other "possibly appropriate" groups, you could post a pointer article to them, indicate that a new, and possibly interseting theme of discussion is starting. From that, one of several things might happen a) no-one answers, or after a very short interval all discussion on the topic dies. In this case, all that anyone wants to say has probably been said, no new group was needed. b) there is a small amount of traffic. In this case, just keeping the discussion in the original group is appropriate. c) discussion proliferates, so much that the people who used to use the group that you chose start complaining that their group has been taken over. This is where you propose a new group, get support, etc. This won't be hard to do, or take very long. You already have the support of all the people interested in your new topic, plus all the people reading the group it is in who want you to go away. d) discussion proliferates, so much so that the old traffic in the group vanishes completely. In this case you have a "new group" (with an old name) ready made. The old uses of the group can't have been very active, or you would never have been able to take over. The group may not have the "very best" name possible (but which of them do now?). Another way to establish traffic might be to start with a mailing list, if it gets big enough to be better handled as a newsgroup, then you at least know that it is going to be used. Its worth remembering that having a group with a name that suggests a topic that you would like to read about doesn't get you anything to read - you need to find people willing to write about the subject first. The various "vlsi" groups (present, and removed) demonstrate that, either the vlsi people are too busy doing fascinating work to have time to tell anyone about it, or are simply not doing anything worth talking about (take your pick), but whichever it is, I've certainly never seen anything useful in those groups. Proposing a group before establishing that there will indeed be some traffic to fill it only leads to lots of people who want to get the (perhaps non existant) information sending lots of messages to net.news.group supporting its existance. Someone then gets tired of all this, and creates the group to make the "yes create it" messages go away, and then there is this empty group, just sitting there. The only way to discover that there will be enough traffic, is to start a discussion somewhere. Robert Elz ucbvax!kre ps: this article is not related to the net.bizarre discussion that spaf's message was mostly about.