Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!lavaca.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: CALL FOR LOCAL DISCUSSION: Split the c.s.a group more? Message-ID: <6746@sugar.hackercorp.com> Date: 8 Oct 90 03:27:52 GMT References: <1990Oct6.051722.7143@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Reply-To: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston Lines: 65 In article liberato@dri.com (Jimmy Liberato) writes: > I'm curious, are there people out there who actually try to read c.s.a. > sequentially without preselecting individual articles/threads? Newsreaders > like nn and second generation versions of rn such as trn allow very EASY > preselection according to subject line and author. Oh, is this the sucessor to the old "are there actually people who read without kill files" argument? It sure doesn't improve with age... it was a bad argument back then and it remains a bad argument today. > I am not in favor of a proliferation of subgroups for a few reasons. First, > just as discussion threads tend to meander off into areas unrelated to the > original subject line so too would the purity of the subgroup be affected > by such entropic tendencies. That's why you have the ability to crosspost, redirect followups, and so on. > Second, the incidence of crossposting will increase dramatically. That in > itself doesn't increase the bit volume but it does defeat the purpose of > insulated discussion threads. No, in fact it improves the ability of separate groups to act as filters. Which is the purpose of insulated discussion threads. I read c.s.a.bunyips because I'm interested in bunyips, not because I hate bigfoot. If a thread is crossposted to both because it's about both I'm still interested. > (Note how hardware stuff is still being > crossposted to tech which was supposed to be for programming discussions.) And there's still a lot of .tech stuff in .amiga, that *isn't* crossposted anywhere. Not enough groups, and .amiga needs to be changed to .misc. > > is not really an increase in volume, right) there always seems to be a problem > with this (witness c.s.a.games). So you will get posts that say: "Our site > doesn't get c.s.a.video so I am posting it here." So you get a few articles you're not interested in. That's sure better than getting a whole bunch of articles you're not interested in. > Finally, I often stumble upon threads that are interesting that I may never > have discovered if they where in a subgroup I had arbitrarily excluded. Ah, to have the luxury of time to read all the threads one wants to read. I have to K threads I *know* I'll be interested in because I just don't have the time. > If indeed there are categories of discussion that maintain a consistent life > of their own then I would be in favor of further splitting. .hardware .software .forsale .rumors .multimedia > As far as I can > see, most problems can be addressed with the use of a modern newsreader and > judicious use of accurate and timely subject line. ... and lots of time. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' .