wm (05/28/82)
Personally I think half the news groups that have been started are silly. Natural language groups fit into this category, but WHO CARES? Anyone can start a new group, and there are several new groups started every week or so by someone who doesn't know the "rules" yet. The only purpose net.news.group seems to serve is as a forum for people to flame about how other people's ideas for new groups are silly, or how something should be a mailing list, or should be in net.misc, or shouldn't be in net.misc, etc. I therefore nominate as the silliest group on the net, you guessed it, net.news.group! Let us go back to an earlier time, when all you did if you thought there was an interest in a new group was to post an article to it. If nobody responds, or if the group sees activity for two weeks and then dies, it should be deleted by some automatic deletion mechanism. What are the chances of seeing this installed in the near future? Of course, we will still see long discussions about what the name of a group should be (you know, I think I will go back into the archives and see what percentage of articles in a group are related to what its name should be. Any bets?). unc!wm