Xref: utzoo news.admin:7849 news.groups:15239 comp.mail.uucp:3819 comp.os.vms:20209 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!ssbn!looking!brad From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups,comp.mail.uucp,comp.os.vms Subject: Re: New newsgroup hierarchy Keywords: make it harder to create backbone supported groups Message-ID: <54528@looking.on.ca> Date: 30 Nov 89 04:42:20 GMT References: <1618.25614348@mccall.uucp> <49454@looking.on.ca> <11685@cbnews.ATT.COM> <9195@microsoft.UUCP> Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Lines: 24 Class: discussion Any 'group creation' system merely defines the *default* for the existence and propagation of a group. It must answer the question of whether, in general, a group is worth transmitting around almost the whole net. Since it seems a majority of sites stick with the default, this has become important, but it is still only the default. A group for talking about sex *is* highly desired. Both readership, posting level and the newsgroup "voting" system say this very strongly.(*) So the default should be, by any standard of this sort, to have a sex group. It is, however, likely that some site owners would be scared by it, and not follow that default. (*)One can speculate that alt.sex would be the most popular newsgroup on the net if it were fully distributed. In the arbitron surveys, it's readership/propagation figure surpasses all groups, including rec.humor.funny. On the other hand, add 40% more sites to the group and I suspect many of the existing readers would drop out. Unmoderated groups seem to reach a critical mass where as participation increases, noise increases, driving out many of the participants, often including the most valued. As usenet grows, group ratings drop, it seems. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com