Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!rpi!tale From: tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: CALL FOR DISCUSSION: news.software.nn Message-ID: <256F785F.275D@rpi.edu> Date: 26 Nov 89 05:45:02 GMT References: <8911231818.AA21431@texas.dk> <256C6141.6D77@rpi.edu> Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY Lines: 53 In ambar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Jean Marie Diaz) writes: Jean> I see no reason to wade through traffic about reader X when that Jean> reader is not installed on any of my systems. Neither is there Jean> a good reason to combine (say) news.software.b and Jean> news.software.anu-news. As has been pointed out in the past, there is a lot of inter-relation between various news systems that it behooves news admins to know. Jean> As long as the divisions are clear (and they could hardly be Jean> clearer in this case), having separate groups provide a clear win Jean> for people who only want to read part of the traffic. People who Jean> want to see it all can subscribe to all the groups. In retrospect I feel my initial response was a bit hasty; at least, I did not support it at all, partly because most of the support for such a stance has already been provided in news.groups, news.admin and news.software.b in the past, by myself and others. I do believe that having a news.software.transport for all of B, C, TMNN, ANU, NNTP, et al, is still a worthwhile venture. Even n.s.readers is worthwhile from a news administrator's point of view (well, this one's view, at least) but it is pretty poor for users. After all, even though the news admin might support several different readers, the user generally has just one which is used >95% of the time. I'd probably end up reading news.software.nn even though I would prefer to read a group about all of the readers. Cross-educationalization, donchaknow. As it is I feel like I read too many groups that relate pretty directly to my work. I don't bother with some of the groups that I would otherwise read and enjoy. I don't like or use nn but I support it here because I know I have users who do like it. I'd be reading n.s.nn out of a feeling of responsibility more than any desire too and that's why I'd want to just bag it. :-) I wouldn't feel quite that way about a general readers group. Summary: for the sake of the users, who really are the reason this is all here, news.software.nn is perhaps the best choice. It would be setting a precedent, though, as being the first news.software group devoted to a newsreader. In light of that, starting news.software.readers seems like a good beginning point for future branching. In spite of my preference, I don't _strongly_ care either way. It's only USENET. Dave PS: Has anyone done any efficiency work on nnmaster? If so, please contact me if you could help me make it less of a resource glutton. -- (setq mail '("tale@pawl.rpi.edu" "tale@ai.mit.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet")) "... the broader subject of usenet customs and other bizarre social phenomena." -- Phil Agre