Xref: utzoo news.admin:7877 news.groups:15315
Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!wbt
From: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups
Subject: Re: Fixing the unbroken
Message-ID: <11941@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 4 Dec 89 15:34:12 GMT
References: <55499@looking.on.ca>
Reply-To: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker,00440,cb,1D211,6148604019)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 43

In article <55499@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:
>
>But I would like to see the "it isn't broken" advocates come out with
>some evidence to support the claim that this system *is* working.

Usenet continues to grow.  People aren't giving it up in droves.
*Somebody* sure seems to think it's doing well.

>Yes, something gets done.  And yes, on the odd votes that fail, the champion
>sometimes (but not always) goes away quietly.

My contention is that, whatever the guidelines, the "rude champion" will
continue to be a problem.  

>But is it picking the right groups?  We are looking for a system to
>answer the question, "is this group valuable enough that it should, by
>default, be distributed everywhere?"   That's the question being asked.

Do you still stick with your earlier claim that a group should average at
least one reader per site according to arbitron ?   I have never agreed
with this belief.

>My examination of readership from sites that report it says that this system
>has done rather poorly.  It has created very few groups that have reached the
>highest levels of readership

A useless statement.  It is a mathematical axiom that no more than 5% of
the sample can be in the top 5%. 

Now, if you're saying that the range of interest (from 60,000+ for the
number 1 group to 3000 or so for the smallest group) is too great, I see
your point; but I don't agree with it.


I guess I don't understand.  Are you saying that there are many
potentially widely-read groups that are somehow being suppressed by the
current guidelines ?  If so, why haven't any of the tens of thousands of
interested parties proposed them ?

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Bill Thacker	AT&T Network Systems - Columbus		wbt@cbnews.att.com
           "Kaldis seems to be one of the few rational people 
                 on this net ... "  - Jack Schmidling


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