From: utzoo!decvax!microsof!uw-beaver!cornell!vax135!ariel!hou5f!npois!npoiv!houxm!houxz!hocda!spanky!burl!duke!unc!mcnc!idis!george
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Title: Re: On the fate of net.general
Article-I.D.: idis.203
Posted: Sat Apr 30 01:01:25 1983
Received: Mon May  2 05:58:29 1983
References: cbosgd.3468


As I understand Mark's suggestion,
"net.announce" would be intended for those
articles that "net.general" is now intended,
but with a moderator, and "net.general" would then
be an alternative to "net.misc".

I agree with others that the name "net.announce"
might be prone to contain arbitrary announcements.
If such a scheme were adopted,
"net.readonly" might be a better group name
for articles that "net.general" is now intended.
"net.general" could then be retired.

Unfortunately I think there are several problems with
Mark's suggestion, which I will outline later in this article.
I suspect that the biggest cause of the problems in "net.general"
is both lack of net education of many of the submitters
and the continuing addition of new users to the network.

I think that reordering the contents of the "active" file
so that "net.misc" is shown by readnews before
"net.general" would be worth trying as a less drastic measure.
This in itself might reduce the number of inappropriate
articles in "net.general".

Mark's suggested solution has two aspects.
It both creates a replacement group for articles
requiring universal distribution
and it restricts that group's submissions to those
articles which the moderator accepts.
I will first discuss problems with changing the name of "net.general".
Effort has already been expended to cause "net.general"
to be nearly universal in both site distribution and
reader subscription.
This would be much harder to do with a new group.
Documentation is heavily distributed that already details
that "net.general" is the group that has universal subscription.
	"Articles to be read by everyone on the whole net."*
This would all have to be retracted.
Unless moderating the group is successful,
the new group (particularly if it is named "net.announce")
is apt to have the same symptoms in the not too distant future.
It is unclear to me that cooperation would be sufficient
for the moderating of "net.announce" to be successful.
If "net.announce" can be successfully moderated,
why not simply moderate "net.general"?
I do not feel that the time lags, redundant transfers,
or vacation outages are serious problems in moderating this group.

As I stated previously, I suspect that much of the problem
is net education.  This is probably the area that should be addressed.
Perhaps if very simple brief documentation were conspicuously available
it would help.


		George Rosenberg
		idis!george




--------
*  This description of "net.general" was taken from our copy
   of the news documentation.
   I do not know if there is a more recent copy that obsoletes this.
   Its description of "net.misc" seems to me to be inappropriate,
   and may be contributing to the difficulties in "net.general".

		"Miscellaneous discussions that start
		in net.general but are not permanent
		enough for their own newsgroup."

   Perhaps this should be changed to:

		"Miscellaneous discussions that are
		not yet permanent enough for their
		own newsgroup.  In no case should
		such topics be posted in 'net.general'.
		A new group should not be formed unless
		it is agreed upon in 'net.news.group'."