rja@edison.GE.COM (rja) (04/12/90)
[This message is being posted somewhat late, due to the holidays.-eliot]
At long last, after lengthy discussion, this is the formal CALL FOR VOTES
for the cleanup/reorganisation of the IBM-PC related newsgroups.
Inspiration for this effort came from Chuq's efforts with the Mac groups.
There are two proposals which are outlined below. All votes must
be mailed back to me within 30 days of the posting of this article
by the moderator of news.announce.newgroups. Votes should be
unambiguous and those containing commentary and "if it were..."
sentences will be treated as comments rather than votes as per the
USENET voting guidelines. The preferred format for the vote is:
Proposal 1: vote
Proposal 2: vote
where vote is either YES or NO. Proposals will be voted up or down
as a whole so we don't confuse the namespace any more than it already
is. All groups are being proposed as UNMODERATED.
I will NOT send any individual acknowledgements, but I will endeavor
to post at least one mid-vote mass-acknowledgement to news.announce.newgroups.
The Reply-To: header has been set so that you can vote easily just by
replying to this posting. Discussion (if any) should be posted in
news.groups and the Followup-to: header has been set for that.
Proposal 1:
create comp.os.os2.apps -- for OS/2 Applications
create comp.os.os2.misc -- for all other OS/2 stuff
create comp.os.os2.programmer -- for OS/2 programmer discussions
after a month rmgroup comp.os.os2 & alias to ~.misc
create comp.os.msdos.apps -- for MS-DOS Applications
create comp.os.msdos.misc -- for all other MS-DOS stuff
create comp.os.msdos.programmer -- for MS-DOS programmer discussions
after a month rmgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer & alias to ~.programmer
Proposal 2:
create comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware -- XT/AT/EISA hardware (any vendor)
create comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware -- Microchannel hardware (any vendor)
create comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc -- Everything else
after a month rmgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc & alias to ~.misc
EXAMPLES of where existing discussions would fit with these proposals:
programming languages and the API and BIOSes and such are all ~.programmer
questions about what hardware can be used with what OS are in the
hardware groups as would be discussions of printers, displays, keyboards,...
discussions of databases, spreadsheets, wordprocessors & other applications
would belong in ~.apps
discussions/questions about installing an OS or getting the config.sys
correct or using the OS user-level commands would all go into ~.misc
Other ideas considered but not being voted upon:
Novell networks: I received a fair bit of mail wanting a separate group
for Novell's Netware product, but almost every person
has a different idea of what the name should be for the
newsgroup. In the absence of a clear consensus on the
name, there shouldn't be a vote for the group yet.
TCP/IP networks: These are already discussed in comp.protocols.tcpip.ibmpc
and I know of no good reason to move that discussion.
other pet newsgroup names: The names proposed above are actually not at all
what I personally originally had in mind (see my 1st draft
posted to news.announce.newgroups a while back).
The proposed names above represent a true consensus of
people who either sent me mail or posted to news.groups.
I firmly believe that consensus is the best way to
decide on news group names and so I am following that
consensus.frisk@rhi.hi.is (Fridrik Skulason) (04/13/90)
I am not quite happy with the two proposals. The main reason is simply that
although most of the newsgroups being proposed have been mentioned on
news.groups, each proposal as a whole has never been posted there for
discussion.
Calling for votes on a proposal which has not been discussed does not seem
to be entirely according to the guidelines for newsgroup creation. In fact,
I would call it completely invalid.
Also, one of the groups being proposed is
comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware
This group was proposed originally, but the general consensus seemed
to be against it. Most posters (including myself), felt that a single
.hardware group was all that would be needed. So, saying that
The proposed names above represent a true consensus of
people who either sent me mail or posted to news.groups.
is something I can not fully agree with.
Finally - the original call for discussion did not mention any changes to
comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer, but now the group is to be removed. Seems
hardly fair without any discussion.
Although I firmly believe that a reorganization of the PC-related newsgroups
is needed, I would vote NO in the case of both proposals, if I was
convinced they were valid.
The first proposal deals with reorganization of the OS/2 groups, as well as
creation of comp.os.msdos.subgroups. The original call for discussion did
not make it clear that OS/2 reorganization was to be discussed as well, and
no strong need for splitting up comp.os.os2 has appeared. I would therefore
vote against this part of the proposal.
The second part of the first proposal, the creation of the
comp.os.msdos.subgroups has also not been discussed. I support and would
vote for
comp.os.msdos
and possibly
comp.os.msdos.apps,
comp.os.msdos.misc and
comp.os.msdos.programmer ?
As the proposal must be voted upon as a whole, I would give it a NO vote.
The second proposal is also a bit of a problem. The most important question
is what we really want the comp.sys.ibm.pc groups to deal with. Do we only
want to discuss OS-independent issues there, and discuss all the MS-DOS
material in comp.os.msdos(.*), the OS/2 material in comp.os.os2(.*) and the
XENIX/Minix/other elsewhere ?
In this case, the comp.sys.ibm.pc(.*) groups would be left dealing with nothing
but the hardware. This seems to be the intention, according to proposal 2,
but such a massive shift has not been discussed at all.
--
Fridrik Skulason University of Iceland |
Technical Editor of the Virus Bulletin (UK) | Reserved for future expansion
E-Mail: frisk@rhi.hi.is Fax: 354-1-28801 |