[net.news.group] less is more - net.{general,announce,followup,misc}

mckeon@unm-cvax.UUCP (06/23/84)

I agree with Dunlop, mostly:

  > Removing net.general won't fix anything.
  > - There is still a need for a newsgroup for announcements and items of
  > interest to nearly everyone.  Net.announce doesn't entirely fill this
  > need.
  >     o  New releases of net software would prevent anyone but site
  >        administrators from posting to net.general.  
  >     o  Articles posted in net.general would be limited to 24 lines.

It seems there are articles which many people \could/ be interested in,
and articles which \almost everyone is quite likely/ to be interested in.
It would be nice if those two interests were served separately. 

It would also be nice if the net.general messages of the form:

'Uh, I've never used this before, but I have a car for sale in 
Flatville, ZX, call 777-555-1212' 

would vanish into zx.auto or wherever. I'm not holding my breath on that one.

 suggestions:

    Keep net.misc & make it the default newsgroup for posting.

    Let there be a group in which posting is limited to site 
    news administrators. Call it anything \but/ net.general.
	( net.wide, net.broad, net.censored :-)  )
    size limit 24 lines (you can always use pointers)

    Description of above group is roughly: 
        'messages thought to be of broad interest by site admins'

    Once the above is set up (?await new release of news?), then
    nuke net.general and net.followup

	[ pause while I don asbestos suit ]

    Let there be \even fewer/ messages in net.announce (!)

	Sorry, Mark, but here's one person, at least, who is not much
	interested at present in Smalltalk, Orlov, Shcharansky, Applied 
	Algorithm Design, or Text compression. 

	Yes, there are worth announcing on USENET, \but/ they should be
	somewhere other than net.announce.  This sort of differentiation
	is the driving reason for some sort of wide, broad, or general
	news group.

	flames on this one to /dev/null, please - 
	constructive criticism accepted.

dm
-- 

Denis McKeon, UNM Computing Center, Albuquerque, NM 87131, 505-277-8148

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