xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (10/20/90)
There's a lot of this, please read it all before posting responses.
Please forgive the next few paragraphs of ranting to make administering
the changes possible for me.
THIS IS _NOT_, _NOT_, _NOT_ THE TIME TO VOTE (though I will accept
proxies from now to the vote announcement, from those who trust me to do
things right, or will be away for the holidays! ;-)
PLEASE NOTE AND RESPECT THE FOLLOWUP-TO LINE; we don't need the rest of
the discussion crossposted, this is just to gather the attention of
others who might want to participate in the discussion, but keep away
from the volume of comp.sys.amiga normally, and might miss the start of
things. (Done again for the first revision.)
PLEASE USE THIS THREAD SUBJECT WHEN RESPONDING to the Revision 1
proposal, to make it easy for me/others to pull this discussion up in
newsreaders.
PLEASE BE PATIENT; it is almost a month round trip to the extreme leaves
of the net, and everybody deserves at least one chance to voice a say.
If all goes well, we will have a new group proposal ready by November 1,
and the groups voted on and created in mid-January. There is no excuse
for early cross-posting to news.groups, and no excuse for the forged
newgroup control messages that have already gone out. Both just
irritate the rest of the net, whose support we _must_ have to get these
proposals accepted during the vote.
Thanks to those who have already emailed/posted suggestions. To
continue the effort of creating a coherent comp.sys.amiga partitioning
proposal for posting to news.announce.newgroups, here is my second cut
at a new group breakdown; as before, probably too many, probably
overlapped, probably left your favorite out; but, I hope this is an
improvement.
PLEASE EMAIL suggestions so I'm sure to keep them; post discussions as
well, of course. The creation of moderated groups posits the existance
of volunteers to moderate them. We've had a couple of volunteers, so we
can have at least a couple of moderated groups.
LITTLE TIN DICTATOR MODE: there is NEVER going to be a proposal that
satisfies everyone in every particular. The result is that I'm going to
make some fairly arbitrary choices about group names and group
partitioning, after reading all the input, and I'm bound to 1) let my
taste overwhelm my good sense once or twice, and 2) make at least one
choice you personally detest. That's the way life is among the Earthie
bushmen. If we could learn to be civilized, things would be better.
I hope people will vote for the proposal even though they personally
handle the traffic in c.s.a just fine and think having a dozen new
groups in their .newsrc or whatever would be the pits. The group size
is causing lots of problems at lots of sites, and spreading the
suffering out a little to help out those who are being overwhelmed is
the consensual anarchistic thing to do.
I hope people will vote for the proposal in toto, even though they think
a particular name or partitioning is less than ideal. Getting just part
of a proposal passed when it only makes sense as a whole is going to
make a hash of things.
Nevertheless, I _have_ _to_ propose the changes with a line by line vote
to satisfy the net new group creation rules; don't abuse the right to
pick and choose. When the vote comes, pull the c.s.a party lever, if
the proposal as a whole looks better than the current mess left as is.
The rest of the net will hack this up enough without the Amiga group's
help.
End rant mode.
To simplify things, a list of the proposed groups with a brief
description is first, and the 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, and newusers questions and the answers to
them from sympathetic gurus go here.
comp.sys.amiga.applications
Commercial and other, other than games, to focus the discussion; also
one of two followup-to groups for the reviews group discussions. How
to use, how to interface, etc.
comp.sys.amiga.hardware
As is, but pull review stuff to reviews, so this is more a how to get
working, bare metal solder hacking, and chat group; also the second
followup-to discussion group for reviews.
comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Discussing the interface between the programmer and the delivered
software (and possibly other tool level stuff in common use, SKsh,
Wshell, etc.), and how to do the software programming task under
AmigaOS or AmigaUnix. Renames comp.sys.amiga.tech
comp.sys.amiga.games
Talking about buying and playing games; games reviews go to .reviews,
but discussions go on here. Third followup-to discussion group for
.reviews.
comp.sys.amiga.market
For sale, want to buy, where do I buy, services for sale, vendor
evaluations, etc. postings, including games for sale postings.
comp.sys.amiga.multimedia
Graphics, video, music, speech, and multimedia combinations thereof.
comp.sys.amiga.emulations
Discussions of the several hardware and software emulations that run
on/in the Amiga.
comp.sys.amiga.compare
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.
comp.sys.amiga.unix
Amiga Unix SYSV4 and successors.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DISCUSSION
1) The following groups from my prior proposal don't seem to have enough
support to stand as separate groups, and so are omitted from this
iteration or combined into other groups. Sudden groundswells of support
can restore any one to the next revision.
comp.sys.amiga.graphics
"Graphics hacks, algorithms and serious stuff for the amiga". Some
support, more opposition. Folded into programmer, for the how to do,
and multimedia or applications, for the how to use.
comp.sys.amiga.video
"For the person with a plan, a lot of time, and a VCR". Folded into
multimedia.
comp.sys.amiga.music
"For the MIDI crowd and the composers among us". Folded into
multimedia.
comp.sys.amiga.verbal
"Talking about spoken input and output". My personal hobby horse.
Sob! Folded into multimedia.
comp.sys.amiga.handicapped
"Special focus on Amiga and the handicapped". Folded into
misc.
comp.sys.amiga.productivity
"The Amiga as a tool to get other work done: CAD, DBMS, WP, DTP,
production video, Accounts Receivable, etc." I really like this name,
everyone who commented hated it. Oh, well. Folded into/renamed
applications.
comp.sys.amiga.education
"How to use the Amiga in a teaching environment". I'd really like
this one, but no one else sees the need. Folded into misc.
comp.sys.amiga.help
"I can't make xxx work with yyy; can someone tell me how?" Folded
into/renamed .introduction, for newbie stuff, and into .applications
and .hardware, for the more complex stuff.
comp.sys.amiga.futures
"Trying to help Commodore plan the future (also nags and rants, of
course!)" Some support, more opposition. Folded into/renamed compare.
comp.sys.amiga.services
"Things done for and by Amiga owners". Folded into market or left in
misc.
comp.sys.amiga.vendors
"Praise and horror stories". Folded into market or left in misc.
comp.sys.amiga.telecom
"Connecting Amigas in homogeneous and heterogeneous networks, terminal
emulators, DNET, SLIP, etc." Folded into applications for how to use,
programmer for how to create, hardware for how to wire up; or, left in
misc. Urk. I liked this one for focusing the discussion in one place.
2) A little 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.
comp.sys.amiga.announce
This seems highly popular, but there was a lot of call for a separate
for sale group, so the for sale stuff got moved to .market.
comp.sys.amiga.reviews
This seemed highly popular, also.
comp.sys.amiga.introduction
Lots of different possibilities for names and organization for this
exist; the names user, newuser, and help (at least) have been
proposed; this one seems clearest. 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
I really liked .productivity, but no one else did. Oh, well. The
.software name is too ambiguous, .apps might cause some problems for
English as a second language types; this seems best. There are still
going to be some crosspostings from .multimedia, but I don't intend to
waste the time trying for a "perfect" proposal, this seems likely to
focus the stuff wanted fairly well.
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 want to read just by reading the subject lines.
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 change is just barely worth the nuisance of
doing it, but as long as were about the task, let's clean this up.
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 it.
comp.sys.amiga.market
Granted it will be a bit more abused than a moderated group (do we
have a third volunteer who'd moderate this one?), I think my initial
move to fold this into .announce was a bad one; for sale notices are
low value traffic to most of the readership, and shouldn't be in the
"must read" group. There were almost as many names proposed as
proposals; I'm going to be a little tin dictator and choose this one.
Some have suggested 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. Please DO NOT crosspost to _any_ other
newsgroup; that's obnoxious and you'll get flamed.
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.
comp.sys.amiga.emulations
The support for this was mixed, but the traffic, the nuisance value,
and the increasing number of emulations (Where's that c.s.a.cray code?
;-) mandate this one, I think. See "little tin dictator mode" note,
above.
comp.sys.amiga.compare
The outbreaks of "why the Amiga should be a {mac,ps/2,atari-tt,etc.}"
postings are episodic, as are the real benchmark 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. The name's not
perfect for the futures part of the discussion, but it is more
important that it _is_ a grand magnet for the c.s.a version of
alt.computer.religous.wars, or whatever it's called.
comp.sys.amiga.unix
By the time this proposal is enacted, the A3000UX will be street
hardware/software, if all goes well on both sides. Let's save the
trouble of another vote in three months, and get this done now.
There are some problems with the name of this group. The net has a
lot of comp.unix.* groups, which puts a lot of pressure on moving this
out of c.s.a. However, I've read that the Amiga SYSV4 OS will be very
enhanced with Amiga specific goodies that wouldn't make sense to other
Unix systems, and I'd like to keep the Amiga specific Unix discussion
in the c.s.a heirarchy; the generic SYSV4 questions can go to a
comp.unix.sysv4 group, or whatever it's called. I have pretty strong
feelings on this one, but not strong enough to send me into little tin
dictator mode; let me/the group know your feelings on this one; I'm
willing to be out-shouted.
3) 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)
peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva)
Since I (almost) know Peter has FTP and other archives set up at his
site, and also since it's a commercial site with some long term Amiga
interest, I'd like to suggest that he take the "reviews" group so that
he can archive the reviews (and even digestify them together to have one
review document for several reviews, if you like, Peter).
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.
In addition, limonce@pilot.njin.net (Tom Limoncelli) said he'd found
another volunteer to moderate, but gave no name.
4) Proposals not added.
comp.os.amiga
AmigaOS is not an operating system that ports to many vendor's products,
so it belongs in comp.sys.amiga, not the comp.os.* heirarchy.
comp.sys.amiga.rumors
Folded in with the computer wars stuff in c.s.a.compare; it's all the
same low nutritional value stuff, and the same crowd reads/posts both.
There were lots of others, but those two needed explaining.
5) Other comments.
The goal is to immediately turn comp.sys.amiga into a node rather
than a group. I have no plan to touch comp.{sources,binaries}.amiga,
nor alt.sources.amiga.
I want to avoid going five deep in the heirarchy, which is why I have
multimedia instead of the (uglier) .media.multi. If the graphics,
video, etc., groups get formed later, they can go beside, rather than
under, multimedia. Having a flat namespace under c.s.a is much prettier
and makes scripts easier to write.
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. A cut in two or three pieces won't be nearly enough.
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;
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.
If I'm asked many times, fervently, (it's a horrid editing task of about
160K of stuff), I'll post an enormous compendium of email and posted
comments on the first version, but the above, I think, captures the
leanings and good new ideas, and I doubt anyone would actually read the
other.
Open season for support, comments, and criticisms; I'll comment on
responding postings as needed.
Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
--
And they're off! (Really I would have had this out right after BADGE,
but there was this post-meeting gathering at the Oasys, where Chuck
McMannis told some great stories, and this big pitcher of beer, and... ;-)danb20@pro-graphics.cts.com (Dan Bachmann) (10/21/90)
In-Reply-To: message from xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG
I think you are splitting the Amiga section up way too much. We still
have the subject of the message to describe what we are talking about. Having
so many different Comp.Sys.Amiga.xxx will create and incredible amount of
cross posts.
I may be nieve to the amount of C.S.A. groups that can be possible
managed, mainly because I access the Internet via this local BBS.
ProLine: danb20@pro-graphics ***************************
UUCP: ...crash!pro-graphics!danb20 * Dan Bachmann *
ARPA/DDN: pro-graphics!danb20@nosc.mil * Raritan Valley College *
Internet: danb20@pro-graphics.cts.com ***************************
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