Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!husc6!encore!houligan!epeterso From: epeterso@houligan.encore.com (Eric Peterson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Splitting comp.sys.amiga Message-ID: Date: 24 Oct 90 13:18:18 GMT References: Sender: news@Encore.COM Reply-To: epeterson@encore.com (Eric Peterson) Organization: Encore Computer Corporation, Diagnostic Development Lines: 88 News-Software: NN 6.4.11 sk2x+@andrew.cmu.edu (Sun Kun Kim) writes: | Well, I think we only need to have one more group called | comp.sys.amiga.gripes and it would just solve everyone's problems. | [ ... ] I mean, just how many messages do you see | that are dealing with all those topics that we are considering?? Quite a few. Enough to make the splitting of the group a necessity. | If you | think it was a pain to look at the messages now, I think splitting the | group will cause MORE problems than solving. Quite untrue. There is a good amount of Usenet evidence that the split will make comp.sys.amiga a much more readable and useable hierarchy. Take a look at comp.sys.mac before and after its split. Look at comp.unix now that its reorg is complete. Look at how the quality of postings to the groups has remained high and how articles have been posted to the appropriate groups. | If I recall correctly, | more than 50% of the messages are flames to people(most notably Mark | Barrett as well as anti-MB's) and flames to Commodore about NOT doing | their jobs. First, there are mechanisms that can be used to handle such postings. They're called "kill files". And I'm sure that CMU has at least one decent news reader that supports such things. Second, even though the postings may not be the most productive in the world, there is apparently a desire amongst people to talk about Commodore's handling of the Amiga. So, let's siphon off these postings into a new newsgroup (called comp.sys.amiga.futures) and you're set. You'll never have to read postings from whiners or flamers ever again. Oh, I forgot -- you don't want to split comp.sys.amiga. | Also, if someone makes a mistake(or a mistake in your | opinion), lets NOT ALL post corrections to the posts. Agreed. E-mail is the appropriate response. And E-mail is also the appropriate response to postings in the wrong news group. | If we keep the above things in perspective, I believe we can keep | comp.sys.amiga a reasonably reliable source for Amiga information. I doubt that. As it currently stands, comp.sys.amiga is too huge for the average reader to keep up with. Even if you did get rid of the grips, you'd end up with something like comp.unix.wizards -- a group with lots of useful information hidden amongst all sorts of topics that you have absolutely no interest in. And although more modern news readers such as Gnus, Nn, and Xrn make it much easier to sift out the good stuff from the bad, they still don't make it worthwhile. | When | I first started reading comp.sys.amiga, it was civilized and it wasn't | chaotic as it is getting nowadays. It was always informative about the | Amiga and I learned alot from reading various posts. I cannot say this | anymore since there are so many gripes about anything. So how is maintaining the status quo (which is what will happen if the group is not reorganized) going to turn comp.sys.amiga into a useful group again? | My suggestion to all you people who whine about Commodore to stop and do | something about it. Writing flames to Commodore here won't do you | didly. You can start writing to the company directly and tell them how | you feel. You might actually get some response back from Commodore. Agreed. But no matter what you say or do, there are probably always going to be those who will rant and rave about Commodore in some comp.sys.amiga group. So why not give them their own place to do it where those who aren't interested can easily ignore them? | There, I feel MUCH better. So I am voting NO for the splitting of the | comp.sys.amiga. We just need to watch what we do and get that level of | respectability back into this news group. Reorganization is the only thing that will give respectability back to this news group. Eric [ c.s.a.announce, .apps, .comm, .emulation, .futures, .games, .hardware, .misc, .multimedia, .programmer, and comp.unix.amiga Supporter ] -- Eric Peterson <> epeterson@encore.com <> uunet!encore!epeterson Encore Computer Corp. * Ft. Lauderdale, Florida * (305) 587-2900 x 5208 Why did Constantinople get the works? Gung'f abobql'f ohfvarff ohg gur Ghexf.