chongo@nsc.UUCP (Landon C. Noll) (06/17/84)
[i hear them flames comming even before i start] during a session block on Usenet at the Salt Lake Usenix, Mark brought out the question of should net.general be eliminated. the vast majority of the people there (98% of >250 people(?)) felt that net.announce is a better way to announce items to the net. in fact, quite a number of people there have long since U-ed to net.general. if net.general goes, then so should net.followup. net.general is a group whose time has passed. net.announce is a much better method for net-wide announcements. in fact, net.announce will become an ever better used if net.general were to go. let us get the discussion started. dont bother sending me mail flames, post your ideas to the net. people at the session felt that the first thing that should be done is to raise the issue on the net, and that is just what i am doing. if you were at the session, then please come forward and be counted! chongo <nuke net.general> /\**/\
tower@inmet.UUCP (06/20/84)
#R:nsc:-107100:inmet:7000063:000:1243
inmet!tower Jun 19 12:38:00 1984
A good idea. It will take a long time to really work.
Why?
Many local and regional distributions have a *.general, that serve the
same purpose as net.general. The extrapolation upwards is natural. So,
net.general will continue to be used at many sites by many casual USENET
users. Thus, it will continue to be propagated into USENET, as net.trivia
has been for a long time!
I suggest instead:
1) That the official definition of net.general be changed to be closer to
net.misc, and contain a pointer to net.announce. This change should be made
in alice!alb semi-monthly list of groups, the emily-post document and the
other documents posted in net.announce.newuser. It should also be posted to
net.general regularly for several months.
2) Someone screen net.general for possible re-postings to net.announce
for a few months.
3) net.followup also have its description changed: to something like:
net.folllowup An out-of-date newsgroup used to contain followups to
net.general.
When traffic gets to zero for a while, it can be rm'ed.
4) If nsc!chuqui gets his new news software up, the backbone sites
can rename all articles for net.general and net.followup to net.misc.
-len tower {ihnp4,harpo}!inmet!tower Cambridge, MAmwm@ea.UUCP (06/21/84)
#R:nsc:-107100:ea:9100005:000:908 ea!mwm Jun 20 16:30:00 1984 Nuke net.general? Well, maybe. I have a suspicion that the traffic would move to net.misc. Since anybody crazy enough to read net.misc probably reads net.general anyway, it wouldn't make any difference :-). I personally don't have any objection to nuking net.general, but others who read net.misc and not net.general may. Speak up if you exist! Net.followup? Might I ask where discussion of things announced in net.announce is supposed to take place? Surely not net.announce. Since these are followup articles, might I suggest that net.followup remain in place for such use. Of course, the other non-discussion newsgroups (mod.*, net.wanted, others?) should have someplace for followups to go. I've assumed that place was net.followup. Was I wrong? In either case, net.followup should *not* be nuked, as it serves a usefull purpose, and will continue to do so even in the absence of net.general. <mike
alb@alice.UUCP (Adam L. Buchsbaum) (06/22/84)
net.general will not propogate back into the net, as Len Tower suggests, because most sites run software current enough to reject unrecognized groups. Any sites that don't and that continue to use it will not have their articles get very far.