Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!apple!agate!agate!adrianho From: adrianho@barkley.berkeley.edu (Adrian J Ho) Newsgroups: comp.graphics Subject: Re: More discussion on fate of comp.graphics? Message-ID: Date: 13 May 91 00:07:57 GMT References: <1991May9.140834.3564@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <1991May10.022230.22527@marlin.jcu.edu.au> <1991May10.042118.29533@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <1991May11.073613.12539@marlin.jcu.edu.au> <4921@sahara.megatek.uucp> <2 Sender: root@agate.berkeley.edu (Charlie Root) Followup-To: comp.graphics Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 47 In-Reply-To: murray@sun13.scri.fsu.edu's message of 12 May 91 21: 58:54 GMT In article <2965@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> murray@sun13.scri.fsu.edu (John Murray) writes: >Instead of creating one or a dozen new groups to solve the misuse of the >existing group, what about making the existing group moderated? This would be a _tremendous_ burden on the poor moderator, for the following reasons: 1) comp.graphics is essentially a "catch-all" group, ie. queries about the latest-and-greatest image conversion software get posted alongside serious research questions. There are only (to my knowledge) two other graphics-related groups: alt.graphics.pixutils and comp.graphics.visualization. The former is not carried universally (or even a reasonable approximation thereof, the alt.hierarchy being what it is), and the latter's charter is pretty restrictive. Hence, the volume of mail that the moderator would have to sift through would be daunting. 2) Making comp.graphics moderated puts the moderator in a dilemma: How does s/he handle the myriad and repetitive requests for GIF viewers and other graphics-related software? Posting these requests, especially the commonly recurring ones, would probably piss the general readership off, but it's hardly reasonable to expect the moderator to reply personally to all these requests. The effectiveness of a regularly-posted FAQ (thanks much, Jef) seems to be impacted somewhat by sites that have short expiry periods, and by new readers who don't know of its existence (possibly because of the early expiry). >In my opinion, a new group that is unmoderated won't solve anything for very >long, so if we need to go to a moderated group, the appropriate thing to do >is to moderaue the one we're already using, rather thao create a new group >and leave the old one to the wolves and wolf pups. I believe that the original idea was to create comp.graphics.research as a moderated group, and leave comp.graphics as it is. Given the content of existing traffic on comp.graphics, I think this is the best idea proposed so far. Since this is the second proposal that I'm rebutting, it seems appropriate that I extend my apologies to anyone who might have been offended by the tone of my first rebuttal (the one about having multiple moderated comp.graphics.* groups). I shall endeavour to refrain from posting net.news while "high" on 4 cans of Jolt and no sleep for two days. 8-) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adrian Ho, EECS (pronounced "eeks!") Dept. Phone: (415) 642-5563 UC Berkeley adrianho@barkley.berkeley.edu