Xref: utzoo news.groups:25869 comp.os.msdos.misc:679 Path: utzoo!mnetor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!haven!uvaarpa!murdoch!news From: randall@Virginia.EDU (Ran Atkinson) Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.os.msdos.misc Subject: Re: CALL FOR DISCUSSION: comp.os.msdos.desqview Message-ID: <1990Nov26.145552.586@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> Date: 26 Nov 90 14:55:52 GMT References: Sender: news@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU Reply-To: Ran Atkinson Followup-To: news.groups,comp.os.msdos.misc Organization: University of Virginia Lines: 42 As the person who organised and ran the changes last summer which created the entire comp.os.msdos.* and comp.os.os2.* heirarchies and generally reorganised that segment of namespace, I find the proposal to create comp.os.msdos.desqview to be not well formed. The best reason to create a newsgroup is because there is evidence of existing traffic which would warrant a separate newsgroup. Having a lot of very low traffic groups is unproductive because net.readers will mispost articles if the "appropriate" group seems unused or underused because they want lots of folks to read what they post. The other good reason to create a group is because there is no clearly appropriate existing forum for such discussion. This proposal clearly fails both criteria. Desqview programmer questions periodically arise and are addressed in the existing group comp.os.msdos.programmer and general Desqview questions periodically arise and are addressed in the existing group comp.os.msdos.programmer. There is not sufficient traffic to warrant a newgroup (as admitted by the proposer in the Call for Discussion no less). Also, there would be a tendency to crosspost items between the existing groups in comp.os.msdos.* and the new group which would be counter productive. Creating groups in the hope of increasing discussion has been established to be unproductive (evidence comp.std.internat). Also, I have questions about the proposed name. The MS-Windows environment is comparable to Desqview in function and in relation to MS-DOS and yet lives in its own area (comp.windows.ms.*) rather than in the regular MS-DOS space. If a newgroup were to be created (I don't see any justification just now), it probably should be in comp.os.desqview or comp.windows.desqview or some other namespace than the regular MS-DOS area. This different namespace idea has been demonstrated to work well in reducing inappropriate cross-postings. All things considered, the Desqview proposal is one that isn't a good idea at the moment. It should be tabled for 6 months and then if traffic has picked up and there is clear need it should be proposed and discussed further then. Ran Atkinson randall@Virginia.EDU