Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!usc!apple!bbn!bbn.com!rshapiro
From: rshapiro@bbn.com (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Here's that bad logic agin (was:  Rec.video.software)
Message-ID: <48601@bbn.COM>
Date: 21 Nov 89 18:00:33 GMT
References: <8911180609.AA21857@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> <1989Nov21.170126.7027@aqdata.uucp>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: rshapiro@BBN.COM (Richard Shapiro)
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 29

In article <1989Nov21.170126.7027@aqdata.uucp> sullivan@aqdata.uucp (Michael T. Sullivan) writes:
>I see nowhere in the article why rec.video can't be used for software
>as well as hardware.  What I mean is that nothing in the article said
>that there were a lot of postings about software and the hardware
>people were getting tired of it. 


Can we puncture this myth once and for all? IF there's a lot of
traffic on an existing newsgroup, that's a good reason to spawn
subgroups. BUT THE CONVERSE DOESN'T HOLD! There's no good basis for
claiming that a lack of traffic is a reason to oppose a sub-group.
There's another much more obvious explanation for this lack, namely
that people who are only interested in the sub-topic don't bother
posting to the existing group. Maybe it's premature to say so, but I
think rec.radio.shortwave is a good example. Some people said "There's
an existing group [rec.ham-radio] which hardly anybody uses for this
purpose; therefore there's no need for a subgroup." Now that
r.r.s'wave exists, there are MANY more shortwave postings there than
there ever were on rec.ham-radio. Why? Simple -- there are lots of swl
people that didn't read or post to rec.ham-radio. Likewise in this
case. If I own a laserdisc player and I just want reviews of discs, do
I really want to spend time reading a group that talks almost
exclusively about camcorders and s-vhs and editors and the like? Very
likely I don't read it and I don't post to it either. Can you conclude
from this that a new group wouldn't be useful or busy? Of course not. 

So can we PLEASE put this bad logic to rest? There may be good reasons
to oppose this proposal, but "lack of traffic on existing groups" is
not, and cannot be, one of them.