msm (12/09/82)
Rick Spickelnier (ucbcad!ricks) has a good point; what harm to lightly
used newsgroups do to the network?
They consume little in the way of the most valuable resources:
uucp transmission time and disk space.
What they do provide is a mechanism to keep "noise" out of other groups.
Remember that "a rose is a weed in a cornfield!" Tucked away in their
little group is information that is usefuel to some people, but garbage
to others. The newsgroups allow one to be somewhat selective about
reading news.
If you don't want to bother with a newsgroup, just unsubscribe.
That's preferable to reading junk in other more general groups.
Granted, mistakes (net.joke) should be deleted (and should have never
been created so easily). Truly inactive groups should AUTOMATICALLY
expire as well as be automatically created (with some effort, to avoid
typing mistakes as in net.joke).
In the recent group of removals, as an example, fa.railroad was removed
without prior warning. There was NO mention of it in either net.general,
net.news or fa.railroad before it happened (I checked this by looking
through all the old news from late October onward)! Now that it dissapeared,
ARPANET messages to ucbvax.post-railroad@Berkeley are rejected with
a bad directory message!
Until a new version of software exists that has an automatic
inactive group removal mechanism, we need to agree on a protocol
for removing groups. The key deciding point in considering a group
for potential deletion is one of INACTIVITY over a reasonable period
(2 - 3 months, not a few weeks). Lightly used groups should stay!
After someone believes that a group qualifies for deletion and believes
strongly enough to take action, a notice should be placed both in
net.general AND THE ACTUAL GROUP ITSELF. Don't expect every reader
to look at net.news or other groups. I know some people that
ONLY look in specific groups (not even net.general)!
Only if there is NO objection to such a proposed removal should a group
be removed.
Michael S. Maiten
Silicon Gulch, California
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