roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (07/12/85)
What? Are you kidding? What ever happened to not creating a new group unless there was 1) a demonstrable need 2) discussion about it beforehand in the proper channels and 3) a reasonable likelihood that the topic of discussion was not transitory? I eagerly await some net fascist :-) deciding to send out a rmgroup message. I would do it myself but I'm a Democrat. Granted, this is better than flooding net.general with jillions of "Hey, old Coke is back!" postings, but do we really need a whole new newsgroup for it? Why don't we just start a newsgroup of the week club? Every week you get sent a newgroup message. If you don't send back the rmgroup message by the deadline, you get another group you have to pay for even though you never really wanted it in the first place. -- allegra!phri!roy (Roy Smith) System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
spaf@gatech.CSNET (Gene Spafford) (07/15/85)
About once a year, something comes along which takes us all by surprise,
and which captures the collective imagination of netters. Usually,
this event (whatever it may be) causes a flood of news postings, all
largely duplicates and all on the same general subject which is of
little interest to everyone else. The flood usually subsides after
a few months.
In those rare cases where one of these events occurs, it is preferable
for a temporary newsgroup to be created ASAP to handle the flood.
There are a number of experienced netters out there who have seen
it all happen before, and in whom I have enough confidence that
it doesn't bother me if they create a TEMPORARY newsgroup to handle
the flood. Mark Horton is one of those people, and he created
net.misc.coke just about the time I was thinking about doing it
myself. He clearly labelled it as TEMPORARY, and that is a big
distinction from other groups on the net.
The last time something like this was done, it was for the Star Wars
sagas, and net.movies.sw was created. (Which reminds me....it is
about time we rmgroup'd that -- see my next posting.)
If netters out there think we should can net.misc.coke and return all
the addicts to net.misc, send me mail. If I get more than about
20 responses to delete it, I'll send out a rmgroup. I doubt
I'll get that many objections, though.
When the volume in the group drops to about one message per week for
a month, I'll delete it then (or someone else can) as it will have
outlived its purpose.
--
Gene "3 months and holding" Spafford
The Clouds Project, School of ICS, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
CSNet: Spaf @ GATech ARPA: Spaf%GATech.CSNet @ CSNet-Relay.ARPA
uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,seismo,ulysses}!gatech!spaftp@ndm20 (07/15/85)
Besides, you may notice that net.general and net.misc are
getting "Old Coke is back" messages anyway.
Terry Poot
Nathan D. Maier Consulting Engineers
(214)739-4741
Usenet: ...!{allegra|ihnp4}!convex!smu!ndm20!tp
CSNET: ndm20!tp@smu
ARPA: ndm20!tp%smu@csnet-relay.ARPAavolio@decuac.UUCP (Frederick M. Avolio) (07/16/85)
In article <324@phri.UUCP>, roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: > What? Are you kidding? What ever happened to not creating a > new group unless there was 1) a demonstrable need 2) discussion about it > beforehand in the proper channels and 3) a reasonable likelihood that > the topic of discussion was not transitory? I eagerly await some net Ahem.... Hey, let me start off by saying 1) I didn't create net.misc.coke and 2) I am not related to the person who created said group. This is kind of an exception to the rule. You know... they're always supposed to have exceptions. net.{general,followup,misc} were getting flooded (it seemed like it anyway) with New Coke - Old Coke stuff. It was quite reasonable for someone to create a group like this in such an emergency situation(!). Especially since said person agreed to remove it when the hoopla dies down. -Fred