xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (10/28/90)
There's a LOT of this, PLEASE read it ALL before posting responses.
BOILERPLATE RANTING - you've seen the "why", here's just the "what":
THIS IS _NOT_ THE TIME TO VOTE (though I will accept proxies).
PLEASE NOTE AND RESPECT THE FOLLOWUP-TO LINE.
PLEASE USE THIS THREAD SUBJECT WHEN RESPONDING.
PLEASE BE PATIENT. Going public 1 Nov 1990, and NOT before.
Thanks to those who have already emailed/posted many excellent
suggestions. The rest of you too. ;-)
PLEASE EMAIL suggestions to me, post also if of general interest.
LITTLE TIN DICTATOR MODE: sometimes _I_ decide, when that's the only way.
YOUR SITE IS NOT THE UNIVERSE! Other sites REQUIRE a split! COOPERATE!
NEW RANTS:
Subgroups are based on posting volume, not quality. Please don't waste
your time and mine telling me group X doesn't deserve to exist because
"it's junk". I know it's junk! That's exactly why i want to put it
somewhere most of the subscribers can avoid it! The volume _won't_ go
away by itself, wish though you may, inveigh though you do.
I should have put this in the first proposal; live and learn. Please
catch up on the group before responding, to be sure you're answering the
most recent revision! A week after the first revision, I'm still getting
comments on revision zero. Sigh.
END RANT MODE.
To simplify things, a list of the proposed groups with a brief
description is first, and the extensive discussion follows.
PROPOSAL
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
comp.sys.amiga.misc
Replaces c.s.a; general talk group.
comp.sys.amiga.announce
Moderated: FF-disks, meetings, new products, product updates, shareware
releases, uploads to archives, bug reports, etc.
comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Moderated, archived: where to put your formally written up impressions
of new stuff: hardware and freeware, shareware, or commercial serious
and game software.
comp.sys.amiga.introduction
Frequently asked questions, how to use the groups, and other standard
and slow expiring postings, also new users' questions and the answers to
them from sympathetic gurus go here.
comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Hardware developers', hobbiests', and users' shop talk and assistance
forum.
comp.sys.amiga.programmer
(Renames .tech) Software developers' and programming hobbiests' shop
talk and assistance forum.
comp.sys.amiga.games
Talking about buying and playing games; archival quality games reviews
go to .reviews, but discussions go on here; "used games forsale" ads go
to .market.
comp.sys.amiga.multimedia
Graphics, video, music, speech, and multimedia combinations.
comp.sys.amiga.applications
The rest of the applications software discussions: business
productivity, desk top publishing, personal finance, fonts, printer
drivers, word processing, utilities, hacks, etc. Commercial, shareware
and freeware non-games, non-multimedia software applications talk. How
to use, how to interface, and so on.
comp.sys.amiga.market
Talk about and personal ads about buying and selling stuff for the
Amiga. Where to find, who to buy from, who to avoid, good prices,
product ratings.
comp.sys.amiga.emulations
Discussions of the several hardware and software emulations of other
computers (Mac, IBM-PC, Atari, C64, Apple 2 series, ...) that run on/in
(software/hardware emulations, respectively) the Amiga.
comp.sys.amiga.influence
All the "here's what the other folks are doing and how the Amiga
compares" postings; benchmarks; discussions of future goals for the
Amiga, rumors, general "do it better" ranting.
comp.sys.amiga.datacomm
Terminal emulators, networking, using and passing archives, downloading
and uploading, archive site pointers, general machine to machine stuff.
comp.unix.amiga
Amiga Minix and Unix SYSV4 and successors, all aspects.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DISCUSSION
1) Changes from last proposal.
------------------------------
Many of the descriptions got cleaned up.
In response to overwhelming demand, it is now comp.unix.amiga.
There was a lot of recent support for .telecomm, it got back in as
.datacomm, a name that describes the archiving part of the contents a
little better, while still evoking the .telecomm idea as well.
With the help of a thesaurus, .compare is now .influence, a name that
better captures the .futures and the .ranting aspects of the group.
All Unix discussion, including the stuff that might have ended up in
.tech, is now in comp.unix.amiga; comments? If the existing product
takes off, that group can be split in turn. I tossed Minix in there too;
comments?
2) Some chat about the proposed groups and their names and placement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
comp.sys.amiga.misc
This is the net standard "chat" subgroup name for groups that have
leafed. By creating this and removing c.s.a as a target for postings, we
force an immediate upgrade across the net; the proposal, once newgrouped
and rmgrouped, can't be "put off for later". This also has some news
software and general tidiness niceness for users; there won't be a group
that contains both articles and directories, so scripts can be simpler.
Post here to reach general c.s.a.* readership, rather than crossposting
to several other subgroups, if at all possible. This will be a big win
for all subscribers. The intention of having so many subgroups is that
this group be small, not large, so that everyone can afford to read it.
Whenever possible, post to a single, more specific group.
comp.sys.amiga.announce
This seems highly popular; it will probably be the most read group.
Think of it as the executive summary of c.s.a.*.
comp.sys.amiga.reviews
This seemed highly popular, also. Having it archived should make the
search for information on products easier and faster, and, if we can
educate c.s.a.* subscribers to look there first, cut down on a lot of
postings.
comp.sys.amiga.introduction
This name seems fairly well accepted now, modulo a couple of people
who'd like the shorter .intro. Per my previous plan, I want to use full
English words where no prior standard exists, for the sake of
subscribers in non-English speaking countries. The FAQ postings could
also go to .announce, but I think having them here with the newbie
"help" interaction is best placement.
comp.sys.amiga.applications
This name seems popular, again modulo the slow typists.
comp.sys.amiga.hardware
This should get a little more of its appropriate traffic now that .tech
is renamed and c.s.a is going away. This is one of my favorite groups,
because it is one whose content I rarely read, and I can find the things
I do want to read just by reading the subject lines. While it's
dreadfully unfair to have one hardware group and all these software
groups, the fact of the matter is that the number of folks competent to
hack hardware is much smaller.
comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Renames .tech; this should eliminate the stuff appropriate for
.hardware, while still focusing the discussion around software
develop{ers,ment}. This name seems most popular, though ".programming"
has been suggested a couple of times. I think there is precedent in some
other microcomputer groups for the current choice.
comp.sys.amiga.games
My baby! ;-) Needs to propagate a little better to match the current
c.s.a distribution, and I'm trying to get in touch with the
amiga-relay@udel.edu folks to get the relay subdivided, so games stuff
from them doesn't end up in c.s.a; this is another reason to newgroup
c.s.a.misc and nuke c.s.a. Anyway, the current success at damping games
postings to c.s.a shows what a good idea partitioning c.s.a is; there
are lots of people using this group, but also lots joyful _not_ to read
its contents any more.
comp.sys.amiga.market
My name choice here seems to have slipped by with only a little
grumbling. Yea! Some still suggest using the netwide forsale group, but
1) no one does, 2) this will get the ads out of .misc by creating an
obvious correct place to put them, 3) there will be a lot of Amiga
specific vendor discussions here. Please DO NOT crosspost to _any_ other
newsgroup; that's obnoxious and you'll get flamed, deservedly.
comp.sys.amiga.multimedia
There was a little support for shredding this out into multimedia,
graphics, music, video, speech, but there was more opposition; for now,
I bundled them all together, and we'll look again in 1992 or so. The
proposal to _have_ a multimedia group seemed well supported. I put the
print media stuff in .applications, though; comments?
comp.sys.amiga.emulations
The support for this has grown a lot since the last posting. There are
several who suggested bundling this in with what is now .influence, but
I'm not going to. Emulation discussions are a legitimate topic of high
value to the folks doing emulations, they are just of limited interest
to the rest ot the group. I don't find it fair to dump the emulations
people into the general ranting of .infulence.
comp.sys.amiga.influence
Name changed; best one I've found yet, suggestions still welcome; this
beats .compare, .futures, .rumors, .suggest, and several other ideas
seen so far (see below). The outbreaks of "why the Amiga should be a
{mac, ps/2, atari-tt, and so on}" postings are episodic, as are the real
benchmark postings, and the "why Commodore should add feature X at no
additional cost" postings, but when they hit, they're hell, so let's
give them and the "what the Amiga needs to adopt from new technology" a
place here. There's no perfect name but this one _is_ a grand magnet for
the c.s.a version of alt.religion.computers.
comp.sys.amiga.datacomm
A couple of people, a day apart, suggested folding terminal emulators,
Ethernet, DNET, Amiga UUCP, Amiga FIDONET, file archivers, packing
uploads, unpacking downloads, ftp questions, data transfer
({x,y,z}modem, kermit, etc.), and archive site locating threads in one
subgroup; arranged that way, there's plenty of traffic to justify a
separate subgroup. I chose .datacomm instead of .telecomm to reflect the
large data packaging component, when I put the subgroup back into this
proposal.
Henrik Clausen made the excellent point that _every_ USENet subscriber
accessing the net form an Amiga is in some sense interested in this
thread, since that's how the newsgroups are accessed, so it should be in
the current proposed partition.
comp.unix.amiga
By the time this proposal is enacted, the A3000UX will be street
hardware/software, if all goes well on both sides. There are perhaps
thousands of the machines in the field by now, hundreds for sure, and
the level of existing discussion already justifies a subgroup (see NEW
RANTS, above). Let's save the trouble of another vote in three months,
and get this done now. This group should, as Bill Vermillion noted, get
the Amiga specific Unix postings. The generic stuff is discussed in
comp.unix.{admin,internals,programmer} or comp.os.minix.
As stated earlier, I was willing to be outshouted on the name -- you ALL
win! Can I have my mailbox back now? ;-)
3) The capture and care of moderators.
--------------------------------------
The moderators' job is to filter (pass on the suitability of) postings,
and to add appropriate Followup-To: target newsgroups to postings.
We have at least these volunteers:
zerkle@iris.ucdavis.edu (Dan Zerkle) Sacremento, California
HONP9@jetson.uh.edu (Jason L. Tibbits III) Houston, Texas
[ peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) WITHDREW! ]
Dan's site is nicely available for quick turnaround on announcements, so
I'd like to suggest that he moderate the announce group. Dan, can you
provide coverage for summer/breaks? Announce needs continuous
availability, even if that just means that moderation is replaced by an
autoposting mail-to-newsgroup script during vacation times.
Jason has an accessible site and a reasonably endurable account, but
needs some hand holding to get started. I've asked him to look into the
support available for doing .reviews; we'll see.
In addition, limonce@pilot.njin.net (Tom Limoncelli) said he'd found
another volunteer to moderate, but gave no name. Is your volunteer still
nibbling, Tom?
I'd still appreciate some more volunteers, since I'm not in a position
to teach the skills of moderating, but there are lots of moderators on
the net to ask for scripts and advice. Also, the more volunteers who are
available, the better the chance that two can get full, long term site
support pledged.
I'd really appreciate the moderator volunteers sorting out among
themselves who gets which group, to save me refereeing. Trust me, I'm
already busy enough.
4) Proposals not added.
-----------------------
> comp.sys.amiga.whine_like_a_baby_but_don't_do_anything_positive_about_it
Cute, real cute. Not included because of the 14 character directory name
limit on older SYSV sites. Otherwise it was in like a shot to cover some
of the responses to this and all previous partition proposals.
Alternatives for .compare:
> comp.sys.amiga.wars
> comp.sys.amiga.mongering (both war and rumors :-)
> comp.sys.amiga.soapbox
> comp.sys.amiga.forum (naw -- too mild)
> comp.sys.amiga.trashcan
>
>. . . Oh no! I can't stop myslef! (Marc made me do it :-)
>
> comp.sys.amiga.free4all
> comp.sys.amiga.tagteam
> comp.sys.amiga.inferiority.complex (oops - 5 levels deep ;-)
> comp.sys.amiga.pixel_envy
> comp.sys.amiga.flatulence
Sure. ;-)
5) Other comments.
------------------
COMP.SYS.AMIGA BYE BYE.
The goal is to turn comp.sys.amiga into a node rather than a group
"immediately". I have no plan to touch comp.{sources,binaries}.amiga,
nor alt.sources.amiga.
RELAYS.
I know about amiga-relay@udel.edu, but can only deduce from the effects
how it works. Please let me know if you subscribe to this or another
relay, how I can contact the operator of the relay by email, and how the
relay works (mechanism, utility) from your point of view. The partition
is going to have a drastic effect on relays of c.s.a, and I need to make
arrangements with the relay operators to get the needed changes done,
and to clean up some of the existing problems (like dumping games
postings back in c.s.a). I already have the udel.edu operator's personal
email address, but not his attention. Sigh.
NUMBER OF GROUPS.
To the complaints that we can't pass a vote with a lot of groups: we not
only can (comp.unix, comp.sys.mac, and the IBM-PC groups just did so),
the group is causing such sysadmin and readership problems, we have to
partition it severely. A cut in two or three pieces won't be nearly
enough.
HUMAN NATURE.
To the complaints that the problems could all be solved with decent
subject lines and modern newsreaders: 1) people _don't_ use sensible
subject lines, and you won't change that behavior by wishful thinking,
though it is still a good idea (see below); 2) many, many readers have
no choice in their newsreaders, being in BITNET land or other barbarian
districts [ ;-) ], and some have only "Mail" as a choice of newsreader
for c.s.a. For the general readership, therefore, this opinion is simply
false, not to mention self-centered (see BOILERPLATE RANTING, above).
AGGLOMERATIONS.
Several people have suggested lumping things related (at least in their
minds) together to cut down the number of groups. The goal of the
partition is to create groups to exclude, not groups to include. The
more stuff that is lumped together in a single group, the greater the
chance you or the next person will have to read it all to get the small
part you want, the same problem c.s.a gives now. By dividing the same
set of postings into more, logical subgroups, you can choose to exclude
some of them more easily without missing what you want to read. There
are some compromises here. For the folks doing Mac emulations, plowing
through the Bridgeboard discussions is a nuisance, but to the greater
net that bought the Amiga to be an Amiga, avoiding all emulation
discussions is a Good Thing. Thus there is a .emulations, but not a
.emuMac, .emuIBM-PC, etc., the (fairly) happy medium.
On the other hand, just because there are two topics you personally
don't want to read doesn't make them good candidates for the same
subgroup; there are other people who will want to read exactly one of
them, and not plow through both in one subgroup. Thus dumping
.emulations and .influence (strange bedfellows indeed) together is very
unfair to the .emulations subscribers.
SUBJECT LINES.
Edwin Wiles made an excellent email suggestion with respect to the
.applications group: since this group is going to mix a lot of topics,
posters should be especially diligent to put the name of the application
prominently (and probably first) in the subject line to assist the folks
using intelligent newsreaders to bypass/choose certain topics. For
example:
Subject: WORDPERFECT 5.0 -- How do I get my new Farsi font to work?
This is really a good comment for all the groups, but he made it
especially for this one. Checking the subject line last thing before
posting to be sure it is still appropriate to the contents of your
article is an important part of responsible posting.
Don't change the subject line arbitrarily; that makes it hard to follow
threads. But don't leave it in an old thread when you've really chosen a
new topic, either.
CROSSPOSTING.
Unnecessary crossposting when the groups are split will cause all grades
of grief to the primitive newsreader sites. Part of the goal of a
complex partition is to provide an explicit and appropriate place for
each posting. If you have something that you feel needs to be in several
groups, post it to .misc instead. If that becomes the primary use of
.misc, and we can keep crossposting down to 1% or less, this partition
will be a big win. This in turn means that if you follow up a .misc
thread and only talk about the part appropriate to _one_ of the
subgroups, you should change the newsgroups line to just that one group,
and not continue in .misc. That will make the threads a little choppier,
but you will be reaching the audience focused on your intended topic
better this way.
KITCHEN SINKS.
If I'm asked many times, fervently, (it's a horrid editing task of about
450K of stuff), I'll post an enormous compendium of email and posted
comments on the rev 0 and rev 1 versions, but the above, I think,
captures the leanings and good new ideas, and I doubt anyone would
actually read the other.
BOUNCED EMAIL.
My apologies to several email correspondents from out in weird address
land; I've had lots of email bounce (email to waterloo.edu is breaking
at toronto.edu, for example, and I suddenly can't get email through
relay.cs.net, and lots of bitnet address are so bogus by the time they
get here and get turned around by Zorch, they break the NASA Ames mailer
going out, one of the most robust mailers worldwide, and ...), and I
don't have time right now for all the postmaster interactions it would
take to get things fixed, while also following the c.s.a discussions and
posting revisions and answering the flood of email on the proposals and
trying to arrange moderation.
VOTING.
When (LATER!) it is time to vote, I'll put up a ballot to cut and paste
(or inclusive "R"eply, but change the address!) with yes/no votes on the
functionality of each proposed subgroup; net rules for Yes > (No + 100)
and Yes > (2 * No) will hold for these votes.
Where there is still significant disagreement about a name (not one
person posting often and loudly but lots of people posting on each
side), there will be a subordinate vote on the names proposed,
_plurality_ wins, Little Tin Dictator breaks ties and decides which
names deserve even to get a vote on them included in the first place.
Even those voting against the functionality should still vote on a name
to get your choice noted in case the subgroup passes.
I'll be using an awk script to score the ballots, so the cut and paste
is mandatory to keep a format that awk can process. My sysop has
promised me a separate mailbox for ballots, too; posted ones or ones
mailed to my personal mailbox will be ignored, trashed, spindled,
shredded, spat upon, and mutilated.
YOUR COMMENTS.
Open season for support, comments, and criticisms; I'll comment on
responding postings in c.s.a as needed.
SCHEDULE.
I'll read all the email and comments on this I can find, and the next
version will go to news.announce.newgroups and news.groups, as well as
_all_ the Amiga groups. I've only got a couple days past the weekend to
get something sent to Eliot Lear to make his Friday posting effort, so
respond quickly, please, if you have input.
Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
--
And they're off!