Xref: utzoo news.admin:7627 news.groups:14603 comp.mail.uucp:3744 comp.os.vms:19592 Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!uunet!ssbell!mcmi!dsndata!wayne From: wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups,comp.mail.uucp,comp.os.vms Subject: Re: New newsgroup hierarchy Message-ID: Date: 16 Nov 89 15:22:05 GMT References: <1618.25614348@mccall.uucp> Sender: wayne@dsndata.UUCP Organization: Design Data Lines: 56 In-reply-to: tp@mccall.uucp's message of 15 Nov 89 11:06:48 GMT In article <1618.25614348@mccall.uucp> tp@mccall.uucp writes: > > [... Terry wants people to carry the following groups:] > > vmsnet.announce general announcements of interest to all VMSnet readers > vmsnet.announce.newusers orientation info for new users > vmsnet.mail discussions of e-mail on VMS systems, OTHER than VMSnet > vmsnet.mail.pmdf gatewayed to info-pmdf mailing list (not yet) > vmsnet.misc discussions of VMSnet itself, > gatewayed to vmsnet mailing list (not yet) > vmsnet.sources source code postings for VMS systems > (including VMSnet and ANU News-related software) > vmsnet.sources.d discussions and requests for same > vmsnet.sources.games recreational software (optional) hmmm... something about this struck me wrong, and i wasnt too sure what it was... basically, i couldnt see why you would want to create a whole new hierarchy for these groups... why not create/use comp.sources.vms for vmsnet.sources comp.sources.games.vms for vmsnet.sources.games comp.mail.vms for vmsnet.mail comp.mail.pmdf for vmsnet.mail.pmdf comp.sources.d for vmsnet.sources.d. (comp.source.d isnt that busy a news group...) after thinking about it more, what really struck me as wrong is that if every operating system/computer started its own hierarchy, this would lead to very fragmented net. each of those separate nets would be much smaller... if ultrix, msdos, sun etc all broke off separate nets, what would this do the usenet as a whole? i can see the point that _most_ sites would probably not need to carry these vms groups, but _most_ sites probably would anyway. if the goal is to save bandwidth used by these groups, then it would probably be better to continue to look at ways to automatically do this for all groups. the same argument can be used that _most_ sites would not need to carry comp.foo either. i can also see that just creating a new hierarchy would be a _whole_ lot easier than trying to run a half a dozen newsgroup votes. 1/2 :-> anyway, it's not that i am opposed to this new hierarchy, or that i think that people shouldnt carry it, it's just that this seems to run counter to the way usenet has been run in the past. most of the other non-mainstream hierarchies are there because the _rules_ for carrying them are different or because they are regional groups. just some thoughts -wayne