Xref: utzoo news.groups:10362 news.admin:6075
Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!ecicrl!ecijmm!jmm
From: jmm@ecijmm.UUCP (John Macdonald)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: tmp.* hierarchy (was: moderated "newsgroups" group)
Summary: disposable newsgroups
Message-ID: <282@ecijmm.UUCP>
Date: 23 Jun 89 06:28:45 GMT
References: <1528@stl.stc.co.uk> <3486@ncar.ucar.edu>
Reply-To: jmm@ecijmm.UUCP (John Macdonald)
Organization: R. H. Lathwell Associates, Elegant Communications, Inc.
Lines: 77

In article <3486@ncar.ucar.edu> woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods) writes:
>In article <1528@stl.stc.co.uk> "David Wright" <dww@stl.stc.co.uk> writes:
>
> [...]
>
>>I think that in the event of a topical group
>>creation, where there is good reason to move faster than usual, it should
>>be possible to create the group as soon as enough votes come in.
>
>   The problem with this is that there is no good way to determine whether
>there is "good reason to move faster than usual". I am NOT comfortable with
>the person proposing the group making this decision; nor do I want the
>responsibility for deciding this myself. If it's topical, create it in 
>alt while the creation process for the main net goes on.
>
>--Greg

This idea of a "group that is too urgent for normal guidline timeframes"
comes up regularily.  Comp.sys.next was a successful example of this type,
while sci.fusion (or wherever it ended up) was not acted upon in this
manner and has been created just in time for the need to have disipated.

This suggests an alternative that might be worth considering.  Why not
set up an alternate newsgroup called tmp?  It would be used for two
different categories of groups.

The first category occurs when a topic is strongly supported as "urgent".
It would be allowed to have such a group created in the tmp hierarchy.
(I will leave for further discussion the question of how we get agreement
that a group really is urgent and thus is eligible for the tmp hierarchy.)
However, part of the charter of an urgent group created in the tmp hierarchy
would be that it would automatically be deleted in any of three circumstances.
(Automatically meaning that no vote is required, not that the news software
would magically make it go away.)

The three conditions would be any of:
    1) two months have past and there is no serious discussion about creating
	a permanent group for the topic
    2) three months have past and there is no vote in progress for the topic
    3) four months have past

Four months would allow the group to exist without any further discussion
for long enough to determine its viability, and still leave time for a
normal guideline-following discussion and vote for its permanent home.

The second category occurs when a tmp group is created for a known temporary
purpose (e.g. the "new coke"/"classic coke" discussion would have been an
obvious candidate for a tmp group).  Since this type of group is intended
to be deleted as soon as its charter purpose has been fulfilled, there is
no point in having the time limit cast in stone (i.e. it would not necessarily
be four months as for category 1, but would be determined on a case by case
basis).  If such a group florishes unexpectedly, then a proposal could be
raised to create a permanent home for it.  Otherwise, it just be removed
when its expressed purpose expired.  One example might be tmp.olympics,
which would be created in mid-July every leap year, and removed in mid-
September.  Another example might be tmp.look+feel, for discussion of
the various lawsuits currently in progress; with an unspecified termination
time (since court cases can drag on even longer than vi/emacs wars).

By virute of its name and charter, a tmp group is intended to be removed
in a short time.  This gets around one common objection to creating a
new group hastily - "but its so hard to remove a group once it's created".

Obviously there would have to be some sort of generally accepted rules
about when the group goes away.  For that reason, I am more comfortable
about category one above - it has clear, objectively determinable rules
for termination; category two with vague termination criteria could lead
to flames and bad feelings if a group is removed when some people don't
agree that it has outlived its charter.  (The tmp.olympic example above
clearly has a better charter in this regard than the tmp.look+feel, and
I think that tmp.look+feel is actually a bad candidate for a tmp group
for this reason.)

... I could probably say more, but I don't want to put you all to sleep
before you get a chance to follow up to what I've said so far ...
-- 
John Macdonald