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From: randall@Virginia.EDU (Ran Atkinson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: what's the difference?
Message-ID: <1991Jan28.231429.23620@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 28 Jan 91 23:14:29 GMT
References: <26550@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <26551@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU>
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In article <26551@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> jdb@reef.cis.ufl.edu (Brian K. W. Hook) writes:
>What's the difference between the following?
>
>comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer

This is no longer a VALID USENET newsgroup.  It was deleted after a valid
vote held last summer and the results were posted and the appropriate
control messages sent out last Summer.  If your site has it then your
news administrator needs to run a "Checkgroups" on the active file at
your site.  Gene Spafford ("Spaf") posts the official checkgroups message
monthly to various groups including news.announce.newusers

>comp.os.msdos.programmer

This was created in the same vote last summer that we removed the
now defunct group comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer.  At the same time,
comp.os.os2.programmer was created for OS/2 stuff.  Later a group
named comp.windows.ms.programmer (for MS-Windows) was also created.

>alt.msdos.programmer

Any group that has a name beginning with alt.something is NOT part of
the official USENET and there is no official procedure for creating
or destroying groups in ALTnet.  USENET votes and procedures are not
valid for ALT groups.  ALT stands for "alternative".

>Also, who decides how these groups are organized?  

The net as a whole decides how USENET groups are named and organised.
For the full details, go read the monthly postings to news.announce.newusers
which outlines both history and current procedure.

>There seems to be a lot
>of mismanagement in the design/maintenance of the boards.  For example,
>wouldn't it be more intelligent to have:
>
>comp.lang.c.k&r
>comp.lang.c.ansi
>comp.lang.c.misc
>comp.lang.c.borland
>comp.lang.c.microsoft

No.  It makes more sense to organise by the OS and hardware than by
the vendor because most of the questions relate to OS and hardware
rather than one particular vendor.  This has been learned by the net
from experience with various organisations and this style seems to
actually work the best.  In fact, until recently most of the
net.folks were UNIX users and so the PC (including Apple, Amiga, et. al.)
groups haven't had nearly as many readers.  This is changing with
time so that I don't think that UNIX users are a majority any more.
Most news is still transported by UNIX systems though. :-)

>Just wondering.  I'm new to all this, so please don't flame me too badly.

No flames at all.  It is a pity that more sites don't make their new
users go read the postings in news.announce.newusers at least once
so they understand USENET right off.

Ran Atkinson
randall@Virginia.EDU

net.oldtimer (dating back to 1984) and the person who proposed and
ran the IBM PC Reorganisation last summer...