Xref: utzoo news.groups:10646 news.admin:6190 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ncar!woods From: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods) Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin Subject: Re: tmp.* hierarchy (was: moderated "newsgroups" group) Message-ID: <3620@ncar.ucar.edu> Date: 6 Jul 89 00:22:01 GMT References: <1528@stl.stc.co.uk> <3486@ncar.ucar.edu> <282@ecijmm.UUCP> <8670@cadnetix.COM> Reply-To: woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods) Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO Lines: 81 In article <8670@cadnetix.COM> rusty@cadnetix.COM (Rusty Carruth) writes: >In article <282@ecijmm.UUCP> jmm@ecijmm.UUCP (John Macdonald) writes: >... >> Why not >>set up an alternate newsgroup called tmp?... > >I like it! At first, I didn't like this idea because of the difficulty of removing groups in practice. I still think that difficulty will somehow need to be addressed before a tmp heirarchy could work. But I do like the idea of being able to create groups KNOWING that they WILL be removed after a known, fixed amount of time. A lot of flame wars (and crap that I get in the mail) such as resulted from something like sci.physics.fakery (oops, I mean sci.physics.fusion! :-) could be eliminated. What I envision "tmp" could be used for is a place to have topical discussions while a vote is held on a permanent home for the topic. What I *don't* want to see it used for is creating groups that fail to pass a vote, or just to get around the normal time it takes to go through the "official" group creation procedure. That is what the "alt" heirarchy is for. It should be restricted to TOPICAL subjects, where the discussion might be severely impacted by a long delay in getting it started. As an example, sci.physics.fusion was topical, rec.music.dylan isn't. >> 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. This is easily fixed, by setting a date ahead of time when the group will be deleted. A time limit that will apply to ALL groups created under tmp. No flames, no arguments. The group proponents would have that long to get a group created in the "official" heirarchy. If this attempt fails either the group gets created in "alt" or disappears altogether. > >How about an absolute maximum life of 6 months or a year? OK, let's see: an official group creation, according to the creation guidelines, takes from 49 to 65 days (14-30 days discussion, 30 days voting, 5 days vote verification). So, I think that 65 days is a reasonable maximum, with creation of a tmp group being an automatic call for discussion on the creation of a permanent group for that topic (note that a call for discussion does not necessarily lead to a vote being held or a group being created; it may be that there are some topical subjects that will really be of only passing interest). This allows enough time to go through the official creation process before the tmp group is removed, but NOT enough time so that groups that fail to go through the creation process can hang around forever. >When the >expiration date comes around, if there is still enough interest then >it would be time to discuss it in n.g and vote on making a permanent >place in the permanent space. This ought to be done BEFORE the expire time comes around. Expiring a group will never work unless it can be done according to rigid rules that the site admins on the net have voluntarily agreed to follow and which cannot be argued with (which means they need to be SIMPLE). >As far as 'what makes a group urgent' That is, of course, the rub. In order for tmp to work, I think the following things need to be addressed (obvious, but at least openly stated here): 1) We have to make sure that tmp groups really do expire and don't hang around indefinitely. 2) We have to come up with a way of defining what is "topical". I don't see any really good way of doing this other than empowering one person or small group of persons to decide this. (I am not volunteering myself for this; I will already have enough to do with the group creation process if I become moderator of news.announce.newgroups which is currently being voted on) It needs to be something that will limit the number of groups that live under tmp at any one time; if the tmp namespace gets too cluttered, it loses its usefulness. 3) We have to come up with a set of definitions that will encourage every site that carries sci, comp, etc. to also carry tmp. Otherwise we've just got another alt and why bother with tmp, just create the topical groups under alt as now happens. --Greg