mark (04/22/83)
Well, in the past couple of weeks, net.general has become a total hodgepodge that it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to read. The entire continent of Europe has turned it off, and I've gotten complaints from Americans as well. This has to stop. I've been reading about derivations of English words (which belongs in net.nlang), on the origin of the word "UNIX" (looks like it's time for Jerry to post netiquette again, with an addition), commercial use of the network (net.news or net.mail), cat names (net.pets), seminar announcements for Rutgers (good grief), pocketknife uses, whether Ga. Tech is on the net, and other mindless drivel. (There have even been a few people using it in accordance with the announced policy - queries and announcements). I also see followups getting put in net.general. I think it's time we did something. We already have a separate newsgroup for queries (net.wanted), and it's hard to put a finger on the difference - net.wanted seems to be for things that aren't as important as net.general. Perhaps it's time to kill off net.general and create net.announcements (anybody have a shorter name that reads as well?) Perhaps it's also time to put some controls on the announcement newsgroup - e.g. put a moderator on it. What do you think? Followup to net.news.group only, please! Mark Horton
alb (04/23/83)
I have a shorter name for net.announcements: net.general A group like this is impossible to kill. People will always use it. It is sort of hardwired into the net. I always have and still do disagree with the idea of moderation: The whole concept of USENET is the bulletin board, to which you can post an article and have it circulated with some essence of speed. Having a moderator would not only slow things down considerably, it would put a tremendous load on the site which the moderator uses (all that incoming and outgoing traffic, doubled: Once to/from the moderator, once to/from the net) It would also bring things to a halt if/when that site went down. Unfortunately, I can't offer a solution: There is no easy one. I think what we are going to have to rely on is peer pressure: If you see something wrong, write a POLITE letter to the offender and inform him/her of the mistake. In this way, newcomers will be correctly guided to the proper use of the net and they won't get discouraged by flamers who feel they have the right to jump down people's throats at the first sign of a mistake.
ricks (04/26/83)
#R:cbosgd:-346800:ucbcad:1300001:000:636 ucbcad!ricks Apr 26 09:13:00 1983 I have one problem with creating 'net.announce'. Not that it is being created, but that it is being discussed and announced in 'net.news'. I would bet that a large majority of the people who post 'I'm looking for Bob Wombat', 'What is the net address of the University of New South Wales', or 'Rutgers Seminar Announcements' to 'net.general' do not read this newsgroup. Therefore, these people will continue to submit to 'net.general' and try to submit to 'net.announce' (may not work if everybody is running 2.10, but everybody is not and probably won't for a while). Rick Spickelmier ..!ucbvax!ricks ricks@berkeley
done (04/27/83)
Why don't you call it "net.world" instead of "net.announce" or
"net.general". It seems to me that it would then be clear where it
goes, and people would be a bit more discouraged to post trivial news
items in it (most of us are at least a little shy when confronted with
the world in its entirety).
One of the problems I've noticed with "net.general" is that new subscribers
to netnews have no idea of the scope of that newsgroup (they may think
it goes only to people in their own company/university/etc.). Indeed,
many may not be aware of the scope of Usenet itself. The use of the
name "net.announce" wouldn't solve this problem ("gee, maybe I'll announce
my beer party this Saturday night...").
To summarize, I think more geography-specific newsgroup names might give
a better indication of the scope of those newsgroups that are not devoted
to specific topics.
Don Ellis
Tektronixsmk (04/28/83)
Do we want net.mod.foo or net.foo.mod? In the former, we have a subnet of moderated newsgroups. In the latter, we have newsgroups with a .mod qualifier. (I guess it's like having c.prog rather than prog.c.) If people are serious about moderated groups, the latter approach is better in the sense that disgruntled sites can put !net.mod into their sys (and .newsrc) files but probably won't (or have a harder time) singling out all the groups. The two approaches are different on appearances only, not on functionality. If you want mod to be naturally accepted to various newsgroups, I propose the latter implementations so that the mod is attached to the group and the group is NOT attached to mod. These views represent the opinion of this installation and not of the author (how's that for a change?).
john (04/28/83)
Since a moderated news group is almost a new genre of information exchange, why couldn't we name a moderated group as mod.foo instead of net.mod.foo or net.foo.mod ? Here's one vote for mod.announce
chris (04/28/83)
A major drawback of mod.announce would be that all of the news administrators would have to explicitly allow it. Everyone has net.all in their /usr/lib/news/sys files now, and it would take quite a bit of work to convince everyone to simultaneously add the new category. Of course, this could be considered a plus, if the people who want to do this want to allow sites to decide whether to accept another class of newsgroups with the capacity for being nearly as large (if articles are posted to both groups) as net.all is now. Well, maybe that's not too likely, but if it catches on, who knows?
jsq (04/30/83)
How about: net.announce to be moderated by Mark Horton, net.important to have a nasty recording but not be moderated, and net.general to be taken out of the default list of newsgroups read by readnews, but otherwise left as it is now. That should satisfy all factions.
george (04/30/83)
As I understand Mark's suggestion, "net.announce" would be intended for those articles that "net.general" is now intended, but with a moderator, and "net.general" would then be an alternative to "net.misc". I agree with others that the name "net.announce" might be prone to contain arbitrary announcements. If such a scheme were adopted, "net.readonly" might be a better group name for articles that "net.general" is now intended. "net.general" could then be retired. Unfortunately I think there are several problems with Mark's suggestion, which I will outline later in this article. I suspect that the biggest cause of the problems in "net.general" is both lack of net education of many of the submitters and the continuing addition of new users to the network. I think that reordering the contents of the "active" file so that "net.misc" is shown by readnews before "net.general" would be worth trying as a less drastic measure. This in itself might reduce the number of inappropriate articles in "net.general". Mark's suggested solution has two aspects. It both creates a replacement group for articles requiring universal distribution and it restricts that group's submissions to those articles which the moderator accepts. I will first discuss problems with changing the name of "net.general". Effort has already been expended to cause "net.general" to be nearly universal in both site distribution and reader subscription. This would be much harder to do with a new group. Documentation is heavily distributed that already details that "net.general" is the group that has universal subscription. "Articles to be read by everyone on the whole net."* This would all have to be retracted. Unless moderating the group is successful, the new group (particularly if it is named "net.announce") is apt to have the same symptoms in the not too distant future. It is unclear to me that cooperation would be sufficient for the moderating of "net.announce" to be successful. If "net.announce" can be successfully moderated, why not simply moderate "net.general"? I do not feel that the time lags, redundant transfers, or vacation outages are serious problems in moderating this group. As I stated previously, I suspect that much of the problem is net education. This is probably the area that should be addressed. Perhaps if very simple brief documentation were conspicuously available it would help. George Rosenberg idis!george -------- * This description of "net.general" was taken from our copy of the news documentation. I do not know if there is a more recent copy that obsoletes this. Its description of "net.misc" seems to me to be inappropriate, and may be contributing to the difficulties in "net.general". "Miscellaneous discussions that start in net.general but are not permanent enough for their own newsgroup." Perhaps this should be changed to: "Miscellaneous discussions that are not yet permanent enough for their own newsgroup. In no case should such topics be posted in 'net.general'. A new group should not be formed unless it is agreed upon in 'net.news.group'."
furuta@uw-beaver.UUCP (05/03/83)
Relay-Version:version B 2.10 gamma 4/3/83; site burl.UUCP Posting-Version:version B 2.10 gamma 4/3/83; site uw-beaver Path:burl!spanky!ihnp4!houxm!npoiv!npois!hou5f!ariel!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!furuta Message-ID:<549@uw-beaver> Date:Tue, 3-May-83 00:38:52 EDT Organization:U of Washington Computer Science Mark, Let me suggest two things about your proposal. One, pick a more explicit, more scary name (I know, I suggested this before) than net.announce. This is an attempt to try and prevent inappropriate postings before rather than after they happen (and to reduce your workload). Two, I liked your idea (in a personal note) of calling the group net.mod.foo better because it makes the moderated nature of the group explicit. Indeed, it might be worth thinking about having both net.foo and net.mod.foo where net.foo was the unmoderated version of net.mod.foo. --Rick
mason (05/08/83)
We have several regional groups that U of Toronto gets/sends mail to, including can.???? and ont.???? for Canadian & Ontario specific info. These are where things like colloquia (sp?) are posted. The moderated news groups sound similar to the current digests, which I find very useful. The only problem is *who* has the time? I vote with genrad!john for mod.announce