Xref: utzoo news.admin:7902 news.groups:15415
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From: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups
Subject: Re: Fixing the unbroken
Message-ID: <12074@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 7 Dec 89 16:14:37 GMT
References: <57577@looking.on.ca>
Reply-To: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker,00440,cb,1D211,6148604019)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 41

In article <57577@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:
>In article <11984@cbnews.ATT.COM> wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker,00440,cb,1D211,6148604019) writes:
>>>The question
>>>that the guidelines try to answer, don't forget, is, "what groups by
>>>default should go to all machines."
>>
>>It seems to me that, rather, the guidelines are to demonstrate that
>>there is sufficient interest in the group to verify that sites you
>>feed are likely to have interested readers, and enough of them to warrant 
>>your carrying of the group.
>
>So what you're saying is that rather than measure how many interested
>readers there *actually are*, we should try to measure if the group is
>"likely to have interested readers," and that we should do this by
>checking if 150 people (typical number) will send email supporting the
>group?

No.  I'm saying that's what we do now, and have always done since these
guidelines have been in effect.  And, since I feel the current system is
OK, my opinion is that the guidelines should continue to have this
meaning.

As I said, this is based on my opinion that the newsgroups currently being
created are, by and large, okey-dokey.

>Seems to me that creating the group in a limited area and checking
>the real interest there is 100 times better than trying to find out if
>interest is likely through a complex and noisy procedure.

Given a spherical football, yes.  What if the limited area is not really
representative of the entire net ?  For example, create a trial group for
discussing Hispanic culture in each of the following spots:  New York,
Texas, Germany, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Florida.   Other than that, I've
not followed your Trial Newsgroup proposal, so I'd best not comment.




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Bill Thacker	AT&T Network Systems - Columbus		wbt@cbnews.att.com
	    Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero