Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Path: utzoo!lsuc!jimomura
From: jimomura@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Omura)
Subject: Newsgroups
Reply-To: jimomura@lsuc.on.ca (Jim Omura)
Organization: Consultant, Toronto
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 90 18:18:48 GMT
Message-ID: <1990Dec20.181848.1910@lsuc.on.ca>


     This message is only a REQUEST FOR COMMENTS and NOT a suggestion
for a change to the newsgroups.  Depending on responses, someday
I may make a serious suggestion, but not now.  I just want to find
out what's going on and why.

     I just received some messages at 'tndb' sent to
'comp.sys.atari.st.tech'.  Being a new group on my system they
were dumped in the catch-all 'letter.box' file that STadel creates
for undeliverable messages.  My first reaction was to decide
that clearly I wanted to receive these messages.  So I started up
STadel again and tried to create a "room" for this newsgroup name.
Unfortunately, STadel will not support a name this long.  My peak
is 20 characters.  I tried the STadel alias system before and it
didn't work on my version of STadel, so I can't alias the messages
to a shorter named room.  As such, I'm considering dropping the
'comp.sys.atari.st.tech' newsgroup completely.

     But looking at the current newsgroups, the 'comp.sys.atari.8bit'
group is almost completely unused.  The only message I saw there
today was one where a fellow with a Mac was trying to get an old
8 bit trackball to work on his new Mac.  That has *nothing* to do
with the Atari 8 bits anyway!  Isn't it about time we got rid of
the '8bit'/'st' divisions?  For my own usage, I could receive
messages into a 'comp.sys.atari.tech' newsgroup.  Well, I have't
tried it, but as far as I know that would be workable.

     Actually, having watched the newsgroup for the last month
or so, I don't see the point in the 'comp.sys.atari.st.tech'
newsgroup at all.  I haven't seen any *non*tech questions in
the current 'comp.sys.atari.st' newsgroup.  Since there is
no "noise" in the newsgroup as it stands why do we need the
new newsgroup at all?  The small amount of traffic doesn't seem
to warrant subdividing it.

Cheers! -- Jim O.
-- 
Jim Omura, 2A King George's Drive, Toronto, (416) 652-3880
lsuc!jimomura
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