Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!nuchat!moray!splut!jay
From: jay@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Old Group Deletion Procedures
Keywords: delete obsolete newsgroups
Message-ID: <2915@splut.conmicro.com>
Date: 4 Oct 89 06:04:34 GMT
References: <3137@ur-cc.UUCP> <1989Sep26.212755.8458@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov> <4492@ncar.ucar.edu> <2908@splut.conmicro.com> <5629@tank.uchicago.edu>
Reply-To: jay@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard)
Organization: Confederate Microsystems, League City, TX
Lines: 26

In article <5629@tank.uchicago.edu> matt@oddjob.uchicago.edu (Matt Crawford) writes:
>a person writes: ['twas me...as stated in the header -- JM]
>) The fewer newsgroups there are, the harder it is to find the right
>) group to post in.
>I don't want to advance the proposition that the author of the above
>statement is a pinheaded idiot, but the statement itself is obvious
>pinheaded idiocy.  Just take it to the limit: if there were only one
>newsgroup, it would be trivial to select the right one for each article.

I won't respond to Matt's foaming ad hominem except to ask if he's
sent Brad Templeton any irrational flames lately.

As for my "pinheaded idiocy", I claim an existence proof: we have large
numbers of postings that say that the poster couldn't figure out which
group to post something to, since there's no foo.bar group. It is
obvious to me that if foo.bar were created, that poster would have
little trouble finding it. As the number of groups decreases, the number
of missing foo.bar groups increases, and so does the user's confusion
level. The effect of having a small namespace only takes effect at
pathologically small numbers of newsgroups.

-- 
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL   | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jay@splut.conmicro.com       (eieio)| adequately be explained by stupidity.
{attctc,bellcore}!texbell!splut!jay +----------------------------------------
               America works less when you say..."Union Yes!"