Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!lethe!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!servax0!alan
From: alan@servax0.essex.ac.uk (Stanier A)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Deleting newsgroups (was Re: 30 day voting: too long?)
Message-ID: <1794@servax0.essex.ac.uk>
Date: 22 Sep 89 19:27:11 GMT
References: <4327@ncar.ucar.edu> <34733@apple.Apple.COM> <4328@ncar.ucar.edu> <34735@apple.Apple.COM> <4377@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu> <1762@servax0.essex.ac.uk> <506@banyan.UUCP>
Reply-To: alan@essex.ac.uk (Stanier A)
Organization: University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Lines: 22

In article <506@banyan.UUCP> gil@banyan.com writes:
?Think about organizing a filing cabinet. Would you leave a bunch
?empty, labled folders hanging around ? Not after the second or third
?time you went looking for something that was misfiled or just hard to
?find. Who wants to keep looking in empty folders ?
?

   That is a lousy analogy. Newsgroups signal the fact they have unread
articles in them, whereas folders do not.

   In any case, we are not talking about empty newsgroups, but ones with
little traffic. That traffic will not go away if the newsgroup does, but
will be added to some other newsgroup - through which readers will then
have to wade to find the articles that interest them. Deleting little-used
newsgroups will make Usenet harder, not easier, to use.


-- 
Alan  M  Stanier	*   University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, England
email alan@essex.ac.uk	|
voice +44 206-872153	|
  fax +44 206-860585    |		If in doubt, do.