Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!STC06.CTD.ORNL.GOV!de5
From: de5@STC06.CTD.ORNL.GOV (SILL D E)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  splitting up comp.windows.x
Message-ID: <9008201400.AA06331@stc06.CTD.ORNL.GOV>
Date: 20 Aug 90 14:00:35 GMT
References: <9008172221.AA21929@Larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab
Lines: 52

Yes, comp.windows.x is ripe for a split-up.

In article <9008172221.AA21929@Larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU> mouse@LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU writes:
>
>...  So the alternatives are few:
>
>	- what we have now
>	- many newsgroups, none of them gatewayed with xpert
>	- many newsgroups, one of them gatewayed with xpert
>	- many newsgroups, with some person sorting out xpert messages
>		and putting them in the appropriate newsgroup(s)
>
>Clearly the last would be the best, but who wants to be the "some
>person"?  It's pretty clearly a thankless job.

Would all of the newsgroups be gatewayed back into xpert?
Crossposting would have to be dealt with somehow.

>The second is not too
>great; each side of the split loses the expertise of the other side.

Agreed.

>The third is not good; netnews will see many articles in inappropriate
>groups, creating much flamage of innocent posters to xpert, and the
>non-gatewayed groups will probably die out for lack of postings - and
>then we're right back where we started.

Why would the news side see many inappropriate postings?  Why would
non-gatewayed groups have insufficient traffic?  (Look at the
percentage of xpert traffic that comes from the comp.windows.x side.
Last time I checked, xpert was roughly 80% news/20% mail.)

>About all the first has to recommend it is that it's in place, its
>faults and benefits are known, and it mostly works.

It works well enough that we ought to be careful not to break it, 
but it works poorly enough that we ought to try to fix it.

My impression was that the Consortium would be willing to support
perhaps a couple more mailing lists *if* there was consensus on what
those lists should be.  (Whatever happened to comp.windows.x.announce
or c.w.x.xannounce?)

I think the best split would be to break out the X programming topics
into comp.windows.x.programmer (a new mailing list), and rename
comp.windows.x to comp.windows.x.misc (xpert).

-- 
Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov)		These are my opinions.
Martin Marietta Energy Systems
Workstation Support