Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!sdd.hp.com!usc!ucsd!ames!vsi1!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: CALL FOR LOCAL DISCUSSION: Split the c.s.a group more? Message-ID: <1990Oct8.100710.2497@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 8 Oct 90 10:07:10 GMT References: <1990Oct6.051722.7143@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 93 In article liberato@dri.com (Jimmy Liberato) writes: >xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: > >> Here's my ... start on the politics of a new comp.sys.amiga heirarchy. >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. We've got _lots_ of folks who read comp.sys.amiga as _mail_. That you have a nice news reader doesn't do much for the fellow in Puerto Rico or on Bitnet who picks the group up in email. There are also lot and lots of "notes" users out there. Most of these folks have no choice in what newsreaders, if any, their systems offer. I'd like to qualify this as an argument not pertinent to the question. >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. Changing the odds for an article pertaining to my interest from 5% in a large group to 85% in a small group is a win for me; I can survive the remaining noise. >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. (Note how hardware stuff is still being >crossposted to tech which was supposed to be for programming discussions.) Actually, this is where the modern newsreader helps. I have little interest in hardware, and if I read daily, I can usually look at a screen or two of subject lines, go directly to any I find interesting, and junk the rest; this filters them out of the main group too if they're crossposted. If I go through the smaller groups this way first, I get to trash lots of the stuff I don't want to read very quickly before getting to the general purpose group. >Next, although sites should always accept redirected subgroups (after all it >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." Actually, the easy way to get the missing groups added is to send a (polite) letter to the sysop from which an inappropriate posting eminates, explaining why his/her site is inconveniencing the rest of the net by omitting a group where the site's users could appropriately post the same article. 60 44000 1134 91% 2388 3865.3 5% 0.14 4.2% comp.sys.amiga 172 27000 701 90% 413 712.6 7% 0.04 2.6% comp.sys.amiga.tech 192 26000 671 85% 407 722.9 5% 0.04 2.5% comp.sys.amiga.hardware 263 21000 542 78% 2 3.6 0% 0.00 2.0% alt.sources.amiga 282 20000 518 90% 2 124.7 0% 0.01 1.9% comp.sources.amiga 305 19000 480 80% 318 635.7 4% 0.05 1.8% comp.sys.amiga.games ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ readers propagation volume crossposts As you can see from the September news.lists report, comp.sys.amiga.games isn't doing at all badly in terms of site penetration, and it is doing exactly what it was intended to do: more than half the comp.sys.amiga readers don't follow comp.sys.amiga.games; it has helped that many people shorten their news reading day. From the volume, it has siphoned off about 1/7th of the traffic. Crossposting doesn't seem to be too bad a problem anywhere in the groups. My gut feel that 9/10ths of the games postings are gone seems about right. If more sysops add the group, the rest of the games stuff can move away from the main group. I suspect that adding more filter groups would have similar effects, which is the point of this thread. >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. Well, unless your news reader is severely broken, it's no harder to read the same articles spread across a dozen groups as in one, so if you want to skim it all, you aren't losing that choice, but you are giving the choice to avoid some topics to others by dividing the group. >If indeed there are categories of discussion that maintain a consistent life >of their own then I would be in favor of further splitting. 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. Where that choice is available, to your first point, and yes, we all need to be more aware when it is time to change the subject line, to your second. That's only done about 1/5th as often as it should be to help out other readers. Kent, the man from xanth. -- I knew I couldn't keep out of this. Sigh.