chuqui@cae780.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (01/11/84)
Well the great influx of hate mail seems to have died down, and before I go
crawl under the plethora of rocks people have suggested I must use for
housing, I just wanted to make a few final comments on my 'great obsolete
topic hunt'.
o I would like to personally thank all of those wonderful people who
showed great insight into my personal habits and described them in
great detail. If I ever get into an argument with a truck driver, I
will certainly remember your energetic use of the English language (and
in on case, esperanto... I needed a dictionary for that one!). It seems
amazing to me that I can spend two weeks asking for comments and
feedback on things, and still be called arbitrary, capricious,
malevolent, dangerous, Machiavellian, ambitious, and megalomaniac.
o I have to appreciate the sheer volume of almost identical letters
from the net.wobegon people. The republican party could use your skill
in lobbying. If you put 1/50th as much effort into using the topic as
you did in writing me letters asking me not to kill it, I never would
have suggested it in the first place (to date, I have received 37
letters asking me to not kill net.wobegon (I didn't check for
duplicates, but there weren't any obvious repeaters). In the same
period of time, I have seen about 4 messages in the topic.
o Adam recreated net.vvs after I zapped it because he said it was
getting used. It isn't getting used on my site (the only reference I
have), and so if there is a difference of opinion on this, it means
that there is a hole in the net somewhere. Since I am only about 5
sites down the net from vortex, I had assumed that I would see anything
coming through on it. Silly me.
o What the mail really showed me was that there are a large number of
people out there who are supposed to be maintaining news that don't
bother to keep an eye on what is happening to the net. I screamed
loudly and often about this, and then deleted only those topics I felt
had a consensus (excepting wobegon, since the mail started in after the
rmgroup went out. That one was a boo-boo caused by the timing of the
net). A large number of letters came in screaming about not being asked
about these changes, which leads me to believe they weren't listening.
o A number of people told me that if I didn't want these topics on my
machine, I should just quit supporting them, and leave their machines
alone. These topics are NOT a problem on my machine. The net is
supposed to be a cooperative venture, and when individual machines stop
supporting certain topics, this cooperation starts to break down (for
example, if there is a site upstream of me that doesn't support
net.vvs, that can explain why I never see any traffic on it...). My
reason for removing old topics was not to clean up my machine, but an
attempt to clear out some of the clutter on the network in general that
makes it hard for newer people to get the information where it is
supposed to go.
The majority of the messages I got were of the 'If it ain't broke, don't
fix it and leave me along' type. Well, in my opinion, it IS broke, but
nobody wants to fix it. I was dumb enough to volunteer my time (and whats
left of my ego) to attempt to start things on the right track... I'm not
nearly so dumb anymore. THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE NET! It is MUCH too
easy to create a topic, and almost impossible to delete one. This is not a
problem for experienced users, since they already know what to use and what
to not use and what to unsubscribe to, but as more and more sites and users
pile onto the net, we are having greater and greater problems with
mis-submissions and multiple-topic submissions. Both of those show me that
the level of complexity neccessary to understand and use the net correctly
have gotten too high.
What we really need is to develop a policy for zapping topics that is as
strong or stronger than that for creating them (I personally think they
should be linked together...). If ANY criticism of what I did is valid, it
is the criticism of arbitraryness, because when there is no policy, any
decision is by definition arbitrary. If it had simply been up to what I
felt the net should look like, there would have been a much larger
bloodletting! I think that a first step might be as someone suggested: as
well as the top 25 topics, distribute the bottom 25 topics (or any topics
under a specific limit) and occasionally evaluate their usage that way.
Anyway, just to make life interesting, and to prove that I really am
megalomaniac, here is what I WISH I had done to the net when I rmgrouped
things. Take them as you wish...
These topics have had less than 5 messages since my active file was
started (early November). That makes me wonder about their usefulness:
fa.arms-d fa.arpa-bboard fa.bitgraph fa.digest-p fa.editor-p fa.info-terms
fa.info-vax fa.info-vlsi fa.poli-sci fa.railroad fa.sf-lovers fa.tcp-ip
fa.teletext net.lang.st80 net.mail.msggroup net.research fa.energy
net.ucds net.mail.headers net.rec net.rec.bridge net.std net.rec.coins
net.usoft net.lsi net.rec.birds net.rec.skydive
I would make that statement that all of the above topics are well overdue
for deletion. Many of them have alternate places (such as net.rec). Some of
them are fa topics, but since nobody seems to want to transport them in
anymore, why keep them around?
These topics have had between 5 and 10 messages in that period of time:
net.rec.caves net.rec.disc net.rec.nude net.analog net.notes net.cycle
net.lang.ada net.lang.apl net.lang.forth net.decus net.lang.mod2 net.micro.432
I think a good case can be made for combining many of these into parent
topics, since most of them are either .lang.all or .rec.all.
In all there are 39 topics up there that have questionable usage (by
questionable, I am currently defining it as less that 10 messages in a 60
day period. I have already removed obviously seasonal topics like
net.sport.baseball from the list). By my active list, there are about 180
topics now (net. and fa.) to choose from. It seems to me we could easily
slash that by 10-15% and nobody would notice.
Also, as long as I am ranting, there are topics that need to be moved:
net.chess -> net.rec.chess
net.startrek -> net.tv.startrek
net.columbia merger into net.space
net.records merger into net.music
net.news.sa merger into net.news.adm <what IS the difference?>
net.railroad -> net.rec.railroad
Anyway, you get the idea.
To close things out (if anyone is still reading, that is), the one lesson i
REALLY learned from this is 'Don't get involved'. At this point, I have no
plans to be anything more than a simple user of the net. I don't need the
kind of abuse I got from trying to do something I thought was worthwhile,
and I'm not enough of a masochist to try it again.
Flames: you KNOW where you can stick your flames!
--
-- Diogenes looked in and laughed--
From the dungeons of the warlock Chuqui the Plaid
Note the new address: {fortune,menlo70}!nsc!chuquimark@cbosgd.UUCP (01/12/84)
There are no gateways for most of the fa.all groups, nor for net.mail.all. We probably should either get gateways or remove these groups. The difference between net.news.sa and net.news.adm is that the former is for the super user person who runs the machine, the latter for the netnews contact. Often they are the same person, but sometimes the super user person lives in some cave and netnews is only on the machine because some non-super-user person brought it up on his own. Of course, there are also many situations where the SA is reasonably aware of his surroundings but has delegated netnews to another person.
burton@fortune.UUCP (01/13/84)
#R:cae780:-30500:fortune:7700003:000:633
fortune!burton Jan 12 16:23:00 1984
I concur that net.railroad should become net.rec.railroad. Since I've
been using the net, all the message traffic (3 boxcars and a caboose - ha ha)
has been rec oriented. In fact, the original purpose: railroad services,
makes no sense, except for a local area. Even then, most service interrup-
tions must be broadcast or responded to in real time, which this net is not.
As for the name of the group: "A rose by any other name ... "
Philip Burton, Fortune Systems, 101 Twin Dolphin Drive,
Redwood City, CA 94065 (415) 595-8444 x 526
- - -
{allegra,ucbvax!amd70,cbosgd,harpo,hpda,ihnp4,sri-unix}!fortune!burtonalb@alice.UUCP (Adam L. Buchsbaum) (01/13/84)
Comments on your mergers: net.startrek does not belng under net.tv since ST is not just a TV show. net.columbia and net.space are distinct. A merger was tried a couple years ago and removed, because people wanted them separate (some people who read net.columbia don't want to see the net.space stuff) net.news.sa is for System Admins; net.news.adm is for News Admins. There is a difference. net.railroad is not the recreational kind. It is the ARPA Railroad list gateway (i.e. real trians)
laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/14/84)
Chuq Von Rospach and I have differing ideas as to what a newsgroup is for. Therefore, our criteria for removing one will be different. According to me, a newsgroup should only exist when there is sufficient hatred associated with a topic that it cannot go in any other newsgroup. A newsgroup should not be created because there is sufficient interest in a topic, just because there is sufficient hatred. Usually these two criteria go together, which leads to a confusion. For instance, as a tolerating individual I do not get annoyed when there is an occasional article about Dr. Who in net.sf-lovers. I can use my 'n' key, or read them by mistake and it won't give me an ulcer. However, when there is a particularly large group that wants to discuss Dr. Who as part of the readership of net.sflovers, I begin to get annoyed. I have to use my 'n' key more and more often. Eventually, I post something which says "enough of this -- will you folks form your own newsgroup so I do not have to be bothered." Thus, in this particular case, it was the sufficient interest that necessitated the formation of the new group, because it precipitated the hatred that caused some of us to say, "move it". In some cases, however, this is not necessary. Everybody knows that some people will hate net.motss, so it is okay to propose such a group even though there might have been no discussion elsewhere that produced "move it" messages. The same can be said for the creation of net.astro.expert (or whatever it is called -- I don't read that either) -- if the experts want to discuss something that they feel will bore everybody else and thus produce hatred then they have justification for a newsgroup. However, given this, Chuq's idea (get rid of hardly used newsgroups) is inherantly flawed, because it assumes that sufficient interest is the reason for newsgroups. Thus he suggests moving net.rec.nude articles back to net.rec. This is not good, in my opinion, because people hate nudity (for whatever reason) and if anybody ever posts an article to net.rec about nudity they run the risk of getting flames. Moreover, people will refrain from posting, not only out of fear of flames but also because they think that the topic of nudity is somehow "inappropriate for the net". If, however, a newsgroup exists then both of these reasons disappear. Moreover, there are those of us who think that net.rec.nude should not have been created as a subgroup of net.rec. We lost the group creation argument a long time ago. You place us in a difficult position, because we read net.rec.nude but not net.rec. If you move the discussion back to net.rec, I will have to subscribe to net.rec or forego reading net.rec.nude type articles whenever they appear. As you may have noticed, they don't appear very often. I will have to use my 'n' key very often. I will get annoyed. I will want to post a "will you folks move all of this rec garbage somewhere so that i can read only the net.rec.nude articles I am interested in" type article, much as I did for the Dr. Who discussion. Clearly this is unreasonable. What I would instead propose is that net.rec.nude be created so that I can unsubscribe to net.rec. Note that this again satisfies my criterion for hatred causing the creation of a new group, though in this case my hatred was for the "main" group rather than the proposed subgroup. All of these newsgroups were used for concrete examples. The reasoning behind is appropriate for any newsgroup. Now -- is my reasoning invalid? If so, why? laura creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
z011@dalcs.UUCP (Colin Pye) (01/15/84)
Has anyone else thought about the suggestion of discussion groups? If memory is correct, the idea was to have each new subject start a discussion group *in the same newsgroup*. For instance, if I am tired of seeing flames on wombats, I can press "u" (as in "unsubscribe to discussion") and see no more of it. Deletion of such discussion groups was to follow the same method as the deletion of articles. On the other hand, if I decide to submit a followup suggesting wombat holes be used for the storage of nuclear waste, it would be placed in the discussion and those who have "u"d the discussion will never hear of it. New subjects appear as regular articles, and discussion groups look like regular articles *until one "u"s them*. Maybe a "D" (go to discussion) option would be nice as well. The sites that don't upgrade right away would see no differance. Any problems with something like this? I'm sure this would stop the creation of some shortlived newsgroups, while contributing to the general happiness of those who propose a new group to get garbage out of their favorite group. -- _______ | O | From the disk of | o | |_____| Colin Pye Net address: ...{utcsrgv,dartvax}!dalcs!z011 Where in the world: Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia
ucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP (01/15/84)
#R:cae780:-30500:ucbesvax:6600017:000:847 ucbesvax!turner Jan 13 00:21:00 1984 Re: Chuqui's services and consequent castigation . The warrior in plaid brings up a good point--it should, if anything, be easier to remove newsgroups than to create them. We might take a page from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"--Heinlein proposes a legislative structure consisting of an administration and a *defenestration* [lit. "to throw out of a window", or "to throw oneself out a window"], with the trigger point for admission being a 2/3 majority, and the corresponding point for repeal being 1/3. In any case, I would like to express my personal appreciation for Chuqui's otherwise-thankless janitorial services. It's an unfortunate paradox that the task of administering of a cooperative can attract people of sensitivity --while putting them at the mercy of the insensitive. So it goes. --- Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)
wombat@uicsl.UUCP (01/17/84)
#R:cae780:-30500:uicsl:8200005:000:343 uicsl!wombat Jan 16 15:39:00 1984 I also think part of the problem was the timing: making large changes during Christmas/New Year's vacation, no matter how much you publicize it on the net, will not bring in comments from the people out there who actually take vacations and don't dial up their computers when they're on vacation. Wombat ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!wombat
lepreau@utah-cs.UUCP (Jay Lepreau) (01/17/84)
Several of the fa groups are moderated, or are manually remailed, and go though long dry spells now and then when someone gets sick or over worked or .... (info-vax). Others experience very cyclic usage, with great bursts of activity now and then (editor-p). So it would be inappropriate to kill these on the basis of a few months observation. (I do not know the gateway status.) A few fa groups are indeed dead on the arpa side.
andree@uokvax.UUCP (01/21/84)
#R:cae780:-30500:uokvax:9300016:000:1636
uokvax!andree Jan 19 21:30:00 1984
Commentary -
I think chuqui's criteria co-exist with laura's. If the traffic on some
topic is high enough to be annoying, it should probably have its own group
(what laura said). Conversely, if there is little/no traffic in some group,
it's probably not enough to be annoying in another group, so it should
probably be migrated to something else (what chuqui said).
However, I think chuqui's criteria for "insufficient traffic" is far to
high. If something shows up on a group at a YEARLY average of once a month,
that's sufficient to leave it where it is. If there aren't enough people to
generate any more traffic than that, the should probably switch to mail
(how few would that be? 1? 10? 100? anybody have ANY idea?).
Of course, it's not clear that such measurements can be taken reliably on
the net. There is evidence that the net is EXTREMELY lossy, so what you
don't see may be busy somewhere else (in a small, local area). Somebody
needs to investigate this. I may in a month or so, if I have the time and
nobody else has done it.
Speaking of moving net.chess, I don't understand where that came from.
net.chess.games (where it belongs. *NOT* net.rec.chess!) was doing quite
well, thank you, when there suddenly appeared net.chess, and all the
traffic moved to it? Would the perpetrator of this please explain it to me?
Final comment - please, PLEASE don't add anything to net.micro. It's already
rather large, and several ongoing discussion ought to be moved out of it. But
that creates problems in the ARPA gateway. Mayhap the proposed redsign of
the net should take {ARPA,CS,BIT,*}net gateways into account...
<mikelaura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/22/84)
<mike has missed my point (I think). Large traffic is not what makes a subject annoying, it is merely one of the things that makes a subject annoying. Thus if there is large traffic in some newsgroup on some sub-topic then it may be time to make a new news group. However, the reverse is not the case. If you mention the word "homosexual" outside of net.motss and net.religion (I know, I just mentioned the word in net.women) you get hate mail. Clearly the word is enough to drive some people up the wall. So -- even if there are no articles in net.motss for weeks or months, moving that discussion group back somewhere is not advised. Moreover, while the group that gets "moved back" may not bother the people in the "back" group -- given that there is almost no traffic (the proposed reason to move a group back) this does not handle the case where the subscribers to the moved group have decided not to subscribe to the "back" group. I can see it now. Where do we put net.rec.nude? Net.rec? LOUD SCREAM from utcsstat!laura who has already unsubscribed to net.rec. Net.misc? LOUD SCREAM from hundreds of people who find nudity disgusting. Net.general? LOUD SCREAM from Steve Perelgut and Mark Horton, both of whom know what net.general is not for... and so it goes ... kind of like the discussions on what to cal a new news group... Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
andree@uokvax.UUCP (01/31/84)
#R:cae780:-30500:uokvax:9300017:000:972 uokvax!andree Jan 28 23:45:00 1984 No, I didn't miss laura's point. She apparently overlooked my suggestion for what should be done with groups that fall into the catagory of: "small but offensive to some" - in other words things that generate <12 letters a year, but won't go anywhere else for some reason or another (does net.rec.nude qualify, laura? I haven't looked...) These should be moved out of USENET entirely, and become mailing lists ala the arpa-net lists (info-micro, info-cpm, etc.). Since they are small, maintanence shouldn't be much of a problem. Even forwarding messages by hand shouldn't be to hard, given a semi-reasonable mailer (the v6 mailer and a shell variable will do nicely, thank you.). I maintain a local micro list that generates significantly more mail than the threshold I mentioned above with no great problems (the user-base is smaller, though). Since there's already a list of currently active newsgroups, we even have a ready-made place to announce lists, etc. <mike