Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site cae780.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!hpda!fortune!amd70!cae780!chuqui From: chuqui@cae780.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) Newsgroups: net.news.group Subject: hoo boy! (never again) Message-ID: <305@cae780.UUCP> Date: Tue, 10-Jan-84 18:17:48 EST Article-I.D.: cae780.305 Posted: Tue Jan 10 18:17:48 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 13-Jan-84 06:30:09 EST Organization: the Warlocks cave Lines: 134 Well the great influx of hate mail seems to have died down, and before I go crawl under the plethora of rocks people have suggested I must use for housing, I just wanted to make a few final comments on my 'great obsolete topic hunt'. o I would like to personally thank all of those wonderful people who showed great insight into my personal habits and described them in great detail. If I ever get into an argument with a truck driver, I will certainly remember your energetic use of the English language (and in on case, esperanto... I needed a dictionary for that one!). It seems amazing to me that I can spend two weeks asking for comments and feedback on things, and still be called arbitrary, capricious, malevolent, dangerous, Machiavellian, ambitious, and megalomaniac. o I have to appreciate the sheer volume of almost identical letters from the net.wobegon people. The republican party could use your skill in lobbying. If you put 1/50th as much effort into using the topic as you did in writing me letters asking me not to kill it, I never would have suggested it in the first place (to date, I have received 37 letters asking me to not kill net.wobegon (I didn't check for duplicates, but there weren't any obvious repeaters). In the same period of time, I have seen about 4 messages in the topic. o Adam recreated net.vvs after I zapped it because he said it was getting used. It isn't getting used on my site (the only reference I have), and so if there is a difference of opinion on this, it means that there is a hole in the net somewhere. Since I am only about 5 sites down the net from vortex, I had assumed that I would see anything coming through on it. Silly me. o What the mail really showed me was that there are a large number of people out there who are supposed to be maintaining news that don't bother to keep an eye on what is happening to the net. I screamed loudly and often about this, and then deleted only those topics I felt had a consensus (excepting wobegon, since the mail started in after the rmgroup went out. That one was a boo-boo caused by the timing of the net). A large number of letters came in screaming about not being asked about these changes, which leads me to believe they weren't listening. o A number of people told me that if I didn't want these topics on my machine, I should just quit supporting them, and leave their machines alone. These topics are NOT a problem on my machine. The net is supposed to be a cooperative venture, and when individual machines stop supporting certain topics, this cooperation starts to break down (for example, if there is a site upstream of me that doesn't support net.vvs, that can explain why I never see any traffic on it...). My reason for removing old topics was not to clean up my machine, but an attempt to clear out some of the clutter on the network in general that makes it hard for newer people to get the information where it is supposed to go. The majority of the messages I got were of the 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it and leave me along' type. Well, in my opinion, it IS broke, but nobody wants to fix it. I was dumb enough to volunteer my time (and whats left of my ego) to attempt to start things on the right track... I'm not nearly so dumb anymore. THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE NET! It is MUCH too easy to create a topic, and almost impossible to delete one. This is not a problem for experienced users, since they already know what to use and what to not use and what to unsubscribe to, but as more and more sites and users pile onto the net, we are having greater and greater problems with mis-submissions and multiple-topic submissions. Both of those show me that the level of complexity neccessary to understand and use the net correctly have gotten too high. What we really need is to develop a policy for zapping topics that is as strong or stronger than that for creating them (I personally think they should be linked together...). If ANY criticism of what I did is valid, it is the criticism of arbitraryness, because when there is no policy, any decision is by definition arbitrary. If it had simply been up to what I felt the net should look like, there would have been a much larger bloodletting! I think that a first step might be as someone suggested: as well as the top 25 topics, distribute the bottom 25 topics (or any topics under a specific limit) and occasionally evaluate their usage that way. Anyway, just to make life interesting, and to prove that I really am megalomaniac, here is what I WISH I had done to the net when I rmgrouped things. Take them as you wish... These topics have had less than 5 messages since my active file was started (early November). That makes me wonder about their usefulness: fa.arms-d fa.arpa-bboard fa.bitgraph fa.digest-p fa.editor-p fa.info-terms fa.info-vax fa.info-vlsi fa.poli-sci fa.railroad fa.sf-lovers fa.tcp-ip fa.teletext net.lang.st80 net.mail.msggroup net.research fa.energy net.ucds net.mail.headers net.rec net.rec.bridge net.std net.rec.coins net.usoft net.lsi net.rec.birds net.rec.skydive I would make that statement that all of the above topics are well overdue for deletion. Many of them have alternate places (such as net.rec). Some of them are fa topics, but since nobody seems to want to transport them in anymore, why keep them around? These topics have had between 5 and 10 messages in that period of time: net.rec.caves net.rec.disc net.rec.nude net.analog net.notes net.cycle net.lang.ada net.lang.apl net.lang.forth net.decus net.lang.mod2 net.micro.432 I think a good case can be made for combining many of these into parent topics, since most of them are either .lang.all or .rec.all. In all there are 39 topics up there that have questionable usage (by questionable, I am currently defining it as less that 10 messages in a 60 day period. I have already removed obviously seasonal topics like net.sport.baseball from the list). By my active list, there are about 180 topics now (net. and fa.) to choose from. It seems to me we could easily slash that by 10-15% and nobody would notice. Also, as long as I am ranting, there are topics that need to be moved: net.chess -> net.rec.chess net.startrek -> net.tv.startrek net.columbia merger into net.space net.records merger into net.music net.news.sa merger into net.news.adm net.railroad -> net.rec.railroad Anyway, you get the idea. To close things out (if anyone is still reading, that is), the one lesson i REALLY learned from this is 'Don't get involved'. At this point, I have no plans to be anything more than a simple user of the net. I don't need the kind of abuse I got from trying to do something I thought was worthwhile, and I'm not enough of a masochist to try it again. Flames: you KNOW where you can stick your flames! -- -- Diogenes looked in and laughed-- From the dungeons of the warlock Chuqui the Plaid Note the new address: {fortune,menlo70}!nsc!chuqui