Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!att!cbnews!wbt
From: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: The disservice of pushing for sci.aquaria
Message-ID: <11565@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 20 Nov 89 14:45:46 GMT
References: <3043@splut.conmicro.com>
Reply-To: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker,00440,cb,1D211,6148604019)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 30

In article <3043@splut.conmicro.com> jay@splut.conmicro.com (Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard) writes:
>In article <11414@cbnews.ATT.COM> wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker,00440,cb,1D211,6148604019) writes:
>>But quite simply, any group in the sci
>>heirarchy will get a larger audience than the same  group in soc or
>>rec or talk; and it will, therefore, be a *better* newsgroup.
>
>BZZT! 

What is this, Wheel of Flatulance ?

>Larger audience doesn't imply better.

It does, at least in a group that operates in an adult fashion.  It gives
you that much better chance of having a reader able to answer some knotty
question, or give a novel insight into some problem.

On sci.military, for example, we get frequent contributions from European 
readers, who add much value to the newsgroup.  It's simply fact that
sci.military would not be as good a newsgroup were it in the rec or
soc heirarchy.

Obviously, that's not the only consideration.  Too large of audiences have
been detrimental to groups such as rec.humor and comp.sys.amiga, at
least for my taste.  So my generalization was too broad; I should say that
*some* groups will be better in sci rather than rec, because of increased
readership.  I would, though, consider sci.aquaria to be such a group.  

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Bill Thacker	AT&T Network Systems - Columbus		wbt@cbnews.att.com
                        Free the Lagrange 5 !