sjb (11/14/82)
It may be November, but I think it's high time for a spring cleaning around the net. I am referring specifically to all of the dead and unused newsgroups lying around. Every few months, someone brings up the concept of newsgroup expiration, but no one has yet to clean up the old newsgroups, and old newsgroups don't fade away; they hang around forever and ever. They way I see it, there are two basic reasons for the presence of dead newsgroups: 1) When people submit proposals for new groups, they often say later that they received ''overwhelming support'' for the group's creation. The problem is that we have never defined what ''overwhelming support'' means. Many people consider 10 yes votes overwhelming support. This is just not enough. In a network of countless thousands of people, ''overwhelming support'' should be in the hundreds, not tens. 2) The main reason for all these dead groups is not that a lot of people use old software which allows anyone and everyone to create a group, but rather because a lot of them were created a while ago when a lot of people did in fact run the old software, and no one has cleaned them up. We can no longer go by the old premise of ''Well, this group exists on our site, so it must be OK to post to it.'' Witness things like net.joke, net.periph, and the now famous net.uniz-wizards and net.unix-wzards. The reasons these exist on a lot of sites is that no one has bothered to get rid of them. Here on alice and wherever else I take care of news, I take great pains to keep things clean and keep these ''illegitimate'' groups off the systems so people can't post to them. But not everyone does this, and many people freely post to them because of it. So it's now time to open our eyes to this problem and do something about it. Further discussion on this should probably take place in net.news.group or net.news. If people are willing, I will go through the list of groups around here and post a summary or the ones I think should be creamed. They will include dead, unused groups and illegitimate groups. How about it, people? Adam
wmartin (11/17/82)
Since we are discussing cleaning up newsgroups... According to information recently posted, the space shuttle "Columbia" is due for a long period of non-use and refurbishment, and other shuttles will come into use. This indicates that "net.columbia" is a bad newsgroup title to refer to news about space missions in general, which will have nothing to do with "Columbia" for some time. If we are cleaning up idkle or obsolete newsgroups, let us also take the opportunity to change (^idle) this one. I don't see why a separate group from "net.space" is needed here; the interests exactly coincide. If a separate group for space-mission news has some benefit, its name shouldn't be tied to a specific piece of hardware. The obvious choice is net.space.flight -- a subgroup of net.space. An alternate would be net.shuttle, but that has the same failings as "net.nasa" or any other name that limits the topic -- it shouldn't be restricted to NASA space flights as opposed to Russian or DoD, nor to shuttle flights as opposed to satellite launches or space station news. We need a general- purpose name to cover any spaceflight information. I really can't think of a better name that "net.space" to cover the topic. Since reducing the number of newsgroups is desired, is there anyone who can justify the distinction between net.space and net.columbia? I read both; does anyone who reads one not read the other? Will Martin
sjb (11/18/82)
Something of this sort was just submitted to net.columbia. My reply was that we have been over this subject many times in the past. At one point, we did stop net.columbia and used net.space. People complained. They wanted shuttle news separate, so we started net.columbia up again. The two newsgroups (net.columbia and net.space) do NOT serve exactly the same purpose. net.space is for discussions on space, space programs, etc; net.columbia is for discussions on the space shuttle program. We also have been through the name business before. The majority of the people who responded said they preferred staying with net.columbia. The main reasons were sanity (once you use a group for a while, it is difficult to change the name) and to do to honor to our first space shuttle. So, net.columbia has stayed, been restarted, and stayed after that. Let's keep it still.
sjb (11/18/82)
Whoops! When I mean ''let's keep it still'' I meant ''let's keep it active''! There is another way to read that and that way bothers me!
schnable (11/19/82)
How about net.space.shuttle, too long? Andy Schnable (ihuxo!schnable) IH BTL x2680
wmartin (11/19/82)
I have received several messages from people who make a clear distinction between "net.space" and "net.columbia" (finding the latter worthwhile but disliking the former). I had not realized this; since I read them both, I thought anyone interested in one would also read the other. I stand corrected. There are good reasons to keep them separate if readers desire this. Also, I was unaware of former name-suitability discussions about "net.columbia"; since it has been decided that it should remain named that, I withdraw my suggestions about renaming it. In one message I received, someone mentioned that only net.space fed into the ARPA SPACE mailing list; since I get that at my ARPA address, I beg to disagree. The net.columbia items show up in the ARPA digest, too. Will Martin
sjb (11/20/82)
I'd like to clarify the situation with the net.space, net.columbia, SPACE at MIT-MC business, since there seems to be some confusion. The way I've seen it, net.columbia AND net.space BOTH feed into ARPA's SPACE at MIT-MC; however, SPACE at MIT-MC feeds into ONLY net.space. This, while seemingly confusing, is actually the best (in my opinion) way to handle it. It lets the net.space readers see net.space and SPACE at MIT-MC, while not bothering net.columbia readers with all the space news, and providing both to ARPA people. One more thing: The stuff that went into SPACE at MIT-MC from net.columbia is NOT resent into net.space!
woods@sri-unix (11/29/82)
As Adam (alice!sjb) will undoubtedly point out, we have already had the
net.space vs. net.columbia debate before, and the consensus was that we do
want 2 separate groups. We also debated the name and decided to stick with
net.columbia. And just for the record, I read net.columbia but not net.space .
I find the number of articles in net.space too high to keep up with, as well
as a bit too technical for me (usually). It is very nice that we have people
on the net who (apparently) have access to shuttle/NASA info before it is
released to the general public, and I find that reading net.columbia is a lot
easier for me than trying to keep up with the shuttle news via the usual
media. I find the TV coverage piss-poor at best.
I definitely want to avoid restarting the debate that is already finished.
Let's keep net.columbia and net.space separate! Yea, Adam!
GREG
ucbvax!{hplabs,menlo70}!hao!woods
harpo!seismo!hao!woods
decvax!brl-bmd!hao!woods