Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!husc6!spdcc!ima!cfisun!lakart!dg
From: dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Fixing the unbroken
Message-ID: <765@lakart.UUCP>
Date: 4 Dec 89 17:46:41 GMT
References: <55499@looking.on.ca>
Organization: Lakart Corporation, Newton, MA
Lines: 23

brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) sez:
> 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.
> .....
> 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.

One possible cause of the above is Harris' lament: "all the good ones are
taken". Just suppose that comp.lang.c didn't exist, and someone proposed it.
Under the current system it would probably be a landslide, and get propagated
everywhere. But why will we never see this? Because it already exists. Partly
by nature of the net, all the _REALLY_ popular newsgroups have already been
created, and the ones coming along now are not going to get as wide coverage.
Very probably soc.culture.korean will not get the readership that
comp.unix.wizards does. Just because it plays to a smaller audience, is it
any less a newsgroup?
-- 
	dg@lakart.UUCP - David Goodenough		+---+
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