Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff From: tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: DISCUSSION - modification of charter for news.announce.newgroups Message-ID: <14563@bfmny0.UUCP> Date: 19 Aug 89 03:39:20 GMT References: <3960@ncar.ucar.edu> <1989Aug13.021012.216@utzoo.uucp> <3994@looking.on.ca> <1047@anise.acc.com> <4001@looking.on.ca> <1989Aug18.030110.3223@nc386.uucp> Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff) Organization: ^ Lines: 36 What's wrong with Brandon's concept is that news.* outranks every other hierarchy; thus it is the one place everyone can and should look for information about the most basic things happening to news. New groups, even outside the "mainstream," are the most important single event in the life of Usenet. Cross pollination is inherently a good thing. If you never got talk.* because you heard it was all BS, but then talk.religion.deist was formed and you didn't even know there were any other Deists left on the planet, you ought to have a chance to hear about it. The tests for admittance should be: Is the new group of potential interest to people who don't already get the hierarchy or pay attention to it? And is the hierarchy in question available for broad distribution? "Broad" might be kind of subjective -- biz.* ok, ba.* well hmmm, tor.* -- but even within regional distributions it may still make sense to crosspost to n.a.n. WITH Distribution: SET APPROPRIATELY. Now would this prove too difficult to police, I dunno. I also think intermediate stuff should be kept out of n.a.n. entirely. Just this: for the mainstream -- one call for discussion (with followups directed to news.announce.newgroups.d, unmoderated), one call for votes, one announcement of success or failure. For the non-mainstream -- only announcements of success, subject to the tests mentioned above. If you don't even get or read biz.* now, you may be entitled to learn when something important happens there, but your vote is arguably worthless and you don't need to be able to argue about it beforehand. I would be much more concerned about the nuisance to the net of debates on creating mainstream groups than I would about the actual volume of one-time newgroup announcements, net wide, even counting minor distributions and hierarchies. The .d group should be created, and the charter here amended to welcome most everyone's birth announcements. -- "We walked on the moon -- (( Tom Neff you be polite" )) tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET