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Path: utzoo!utcsstat!laura
From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: hoo boy! (never again)
Message-ID: <1648@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 13-Jan-84 20:24:45 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1648
Posted: Fri Jan 13 20:24:45 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Jan-84 00:15:22 EST
References: <305@cae780.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 61

Chuq Von Rospach and I have differing ideas as to what a newsgroup is for.
Therefore, our criteria for removing one will be different. According
to me, a newsgroup should only exist when there is sufficient hatred
associated with a topic that it cannot go in any other newsgroup. A newsgroup
should not be created because there is sufficient interest in a topic,
just because there is sufficient hatred.

Usually these two criteria go together, which leads to a confusion. For
instance, as a tolerating individual I do not get annoyed when there is
an occasional article about Dr. Who in net.sf-lovers. I can use my 'n'
key, or read them by mistake and it won't give me an ulcer. However,
when there is a particularly large group that wants to discuss Dr. Who
as part of the readership of net.sflovers, I begin to get annoyed. I have
to use my 'n' key more and more often. Eventually, I post something which
says "enough of this -- will you folks form your own newsgroup so I do
not have to be bothered." Thus, in this particular case, it was the
sufficient interest that necessitated the formation of the new group,
because it precipitated the hatred that caused some of us to say, "move it".

In some cases, however, this is not necessary. Everybody knows that some
people will hate net.motss, so it is okay to propose such a group even
though there might have been no discussion elsewhere that produced "move
it" messages. The same can be said for the creation of net.astro.expert
(or whatever it is called -- I don't read that either) -- if the experts
want to discuss something that they feel will bore everybody else and
thus produce hatred then they have justification for a newsgroup.

However, given this, Chuq's idea (get rid of hardly used newsgroups) 
is inherantly flawed, because it assumes that sufficient interest is
the reason for newsgroups. Thus he suggests moving net.rec.nude
articles back to net.rec. This is not good, in my opinion, because
people hate nudity (for whatever reason) and if anybody ever posts
an article to net.rec about nudity they run the risk of getting flames.
Moreover, people will refrain from posting, not only out of fear of
flames but also because they think that the topic of nudity is somehow
"inappropriate for the net". If, however, a newsgroup exists then both
of these reasons disappear.

Moreover, there are those of us who think that net.rec.nude should not
have been created as a subgroup of net.rec. We lost the group creation
argument a long time ago. You place us in a difficult position, because
we read net.rec.nude but not net.rec. If you move the discussion back
to net.rec, I will have to subscribe to net.rec or forego reading
net.rec.nude type articles whenever they appear. As you may have noticed,
they don't appear very often. I will have to use my 'n' key very often.
I will get annoyed. I will want to post a "will you folks move all of
this rec garbage somewhere so that i can read only the net.rec.nude
articles I am interested in" type article, much as I did for the Dr. Who
discussion. Clearly this is unreasonable. What I would instead propose is
that net.rec.nude be created so that I can unsubscribe to net.rec. Note
that this again satisfies my criterion for hatred causing the creation
of a new group, though in this case my hatred was for the "main" group
rather than the proposed subgroup.

All of these newsgroups were used for concrete examples. The reasoning behind
is appropriate for any newsgroup.

Now -- is my reasoning invalid? If so, why?

laura creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura