Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!enea.se!sommar
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Namespace Spring Cleaning -- not this year.
Message-ID: <8910141059.AA09475@helios.enea.se>
Date: 14 Oct 89 10:59:50 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 136

(The news flow here is somewhat unstable, My apologies if this
article is redundant.)

Chuq von Rospach (chuq@apple.com) writes:
>A couple of weeks ago I brought up the concept of a "name space spring
>cleaning"

Of course we can't have a spring cleaning *this* year. Spring  is gone
and we can't turn the clock back. :-)

Seriously, although Chuq has renounced his idea, I cannot keep
from commenting the draft ofd proposed cleaning activities. At least
some of the ideas reveals that Chuq doesn't know very well what
some groups are being used for.
  Chuq said in his article that he had been thinking of removing
some of the items. If these are the same as I have objections
against, fine. Then I'm writing this article unnecessarily.

>Rename the "news.*" top-level to "netnews.*". There has been a continuing
>problem with the ambiguity of the name "news" -- the intention is to have
>netnews administration related groups, but people continually misintepret it
>as news-of-the-day.

Good idea. Actually, couldn't we go ahead with this one now? (OK,
I know it's a a pain to do it, but it is temptning.)

>Rename the "sci.*" top-level to "tech.*" -- this would closer reflect
>reality and remove some of the dissension about how strictly to define the
>concept of 'sci'.

NO! The vast majority of news-readers and writers are computer
professionals, but not everyone. And I would suspect that the
amount of other scientists taking advantage of international
networks is increasing. Another issue is whether they are interested
in having conferences on Usenet where their scientific articles
runs the risk of drowning in all articles from not-always-so-well-
informed laymen. But some maybe would. Sci.lang is a prime example
that I will return to.
  Then why not "tech"? Because not all sciences are technical. 
Electronics, no problem. But linguistics, economics and medicine?
True, there maybe are not many economics and doctors hanging round
on the net currently, but there may be in the future. (But there
will never be any scientists devoting there prime time to acquariums
to justify a newsgroup.)
  "Tech" could still be an idea if one wants to distinguish technical,
not directly computer-related groups from non-technical sciences,
but right now I don't think it is worth it.

>There is no need for new top-level domains.

Unless, one should try to form a top-level domain covering the 
aspects of commercial life and workplace issues. This should be
a "serious" domain, and be honoured as such. Given the people on
the net it would be many issues related to the computer industry,
but not from a techical point of view. Some sample issues: non-
techical management, offices and cubicles (which turns up in
comp.software-eng of all places from time to time), discrimination,
marketing. Whether there is interest enough for all these topics to
justify any groups, I don't know. There is one obvious example
of a group to move to this domain, namely comp.society.woman. There
are probably more.
  I'd like to emphasize the domain I'm looking for is not "soc". Soc
is directed much more private life, and besides I wouldn't call
"soc" a serious domain with soc.singles et al there.
  Neither isn't it "biz", although that's closer. "Biz" is not part
of mainstream Usenet currently, but if it were maybe that would do
the trick.

>old name		(new name)
>comp.music		(rec.music.computers)

Or just delete it and refer people to rec.music.synth. I think
comp.music have a very low traffic. Anyway, it doesn't seem like
a group that should be in comp. (I don't read it, so I don't know.)

>comp.society		(soc.computers)
>comp.society.futures	(soc.futures)
>comp.society.women	(soc.women.computing)

All are probably candidates for the domain I suggested above. As
for comp.society.women, "soc" was not an alternative when the
group was created. (In "soc" there would be no moderator available.)
Unless Patricia Roberts has changed her mind, I guess this still is
true. A cleaning that moves groups to where they very consciously
were kept away from in the first place is not a good cleaning.

>sci.economics		(soc.economics [misc.economics?]

The name is sci.econ, but ought to be renamed to *.economics.
Economics is a science, so I have no problem with that. But
unless the group is moderated it may run the risk of becoming
another talk.politics.misc. I would advocate that it'll stay
in sci for another while.

>sci.lang		(soc.culture.english)

Do you read sci.lang Chuq? I conclude you do not. If you did,
you wouldn't come up with that proposal. Sci.lang, if anything
is a scientific group, devoted to the science of linguistics.
Basically there are three kinds of people particpating: educated
linguists whose articles are not always understandable to me who
belongs to category two, well-informed laymen. The last category
are Americans, whoops I mean not-so-well-informed laymen who thinks
the group is intended for langauge trivia and spelling flames.
  The group is far from perfect, but better than many other. The SNR
is unnecessarily low due to all triva stuff that turns up. ("What English
word has most vowels in a row" belongs somewhere else than sci.lang.)
Admitted the language mostly discussed is English, but sci.lang is *not*,
I repeat, *not* a soc.culture.english in disguise. (Another issue that
the creation of soc.culture.english could relieve sci.lang from some 
traffic.)
  One could think of reorganize the group in sci.linguistics,
sci.lang.misc, sci.lang.ethymology, soc.culture.english and
rec.puzzles.lang, but the traffic in sci.lang is not that high.
Renaming it to sci.linguistics would remove much of the crap.

>sci.philosophy.*	(soc.philosophy.*)

So philosophy is not a science? (Once again, a group I don't read,
but I don't like the attitude.)

>Group Deletions: ([[[under construction!]]])
>comp.edu
Isn't this group active and living well?

>comp.std.internat
The traffic in this group is *low*, I know. But if you ask me,
I want to keep it. Tell me, where else do I ask questions about
character standards like ISO 10646? (Well, maybe I should ask
somewhere else, because I still haven't got any answer.)

>rec.music.reviews
Isn't this a bogus group anyway? Just rmgroup it!
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
"My baby's a 26. On a scale from one to ten, my baby's a 26." - Chic