Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!woods
From: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Old Group Deletion Procedures
Keywords: delete obsolete newsgroups
Message-ID: <4578@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 4 Oct 89 17:28:08 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> <2915@splut.conmicro.com>
Reply-To: woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods)
Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 38

In article <2915@splut.conmicro.com> jay@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
>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.

  Yes, ASSUMING that foo.bar is in the "logical" place in the namespace.
Most flame wars over group creations, with very few exceptions, have centered
around this aspect of it, rather than against the idea of the group itself.

>As the number of groups decreases, the number
>of missing foo.bar groups increases, and so does the user's confusion
>level.

  What you have done here is convincingly argue that there is such a thing
as too few newsgroups. I agree. However, this does NOT prove that there
ISN'T such a thing as too MANY newsgroups. The "there is no foo.bar group"
could just as likely result from the fact that the group is named baz.foo.bar 
instead, and the user couldn't find it. The likelihood of this happening 
increases with the number of newsgroups, and in particular it will be worse
if the organization of the namespace is worse. So, looking at BOTH Jay's and
my arguments, I would conclude:

1) Groups which are really needed SHOULD be created. This means an absolute
   limit on the number of newsgroups is not a good idea.

2) There should be SOME kind of limit on how many newsgroups we have. This 
   means that there should be some kind of determination that a group IS in
   fact needed before it is created. It also means that it would be a good
   idea to have some way of getting rid of groups that are no longer needed.

3) We can handle a lot more newsgroups if they are placed in the namespace
   properly. This means naming issues ARE important and SHOULD be considered
   when creating a new group. This implies that there should be some way
   of preventing the creation of misnamed groups, or forcing a name change
   to something more reasonable.

--Greg