Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 3/23/84; site cbosgd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!cbosgd!mark From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.news Subject: Re: nuke net.general? & a radical proposal Message-ID: <149@cbosgd.UUCP> Date: Sun, 22-Jul-84 02:31:23 EDT Article-I.D.: cbosgd.149 Posted: Sun Jul 22 02:31:23 1984 Date-Received: Mon, 23-Jul-84 00:25:45 EDT Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus Lines: 135 A while back I took a net survey about whether to get rid of net.general. This is a summary of the results. Get rid of net.general: In favor: 61 Opposed: 22 Get rid of net.followup: In favor: 17 Opposed: 6 (obviously many people didn't have an opinion) There were 6 people who thought the traffic would just move to net.announce - these people didn't realize that net.announce is moderated and the software enforces this. There were 4 people who didn't understand what all the fuss was about because they felt net.general is a very low volume newsgroup. These people all subscribe to high volume newsgroups like net.unix-wizards and net.cooks. Eleven people raised serious issues that need consideration, or made good points. Here are brief summaries of the issues. My comments are in brackets. (1) There should be some "wide access" newsgroup where things that desire a wide audience but aren't really that important can go. One way of viewing this is to rename net.general something else. Another approach is to distribute the traffic among several newsgroups, such as net.misc, net.wanted, and specific newsgroups. [I propose that this traffic go into net.wanted, which should be subdivided into a half dozen or so subgroups.] (2) There is interest in having work-related and non-work-related divisions. This was brought up at Usenix and soundly voted down as having almost no support, but several people have mentioned it on the net, including some from Europe, which is spending a lot more money than we. The advantage to this is it makes it easier for sites that only want "work-related" groups to get them (as the news subscription lines approach buffer overflow.) The disadvantages are (1) someone has to choose what is and isn't "work related" and it won't be right for everybody, and (2) it will make it easier to only get work-related stuff, which in turn may cause some sites to cut things off that they wouldn't have otherwise. [There is a discussion going on right now on a private mailing list about a Usenet newsgroup reorganization. It is set up to divide the current net.all into six categories: Leisure, Discussion, Net Administration, Comp Sci, Applications and Sciences, and General Info. The current topic of discussion is Brad Templeton's "KNews" based on Keywords (a good idea but with no software written or forthcoming). When this discussion reaches a conclusion, the result will be presented to the net as a proposal for reorganization (I must emphasize that no decision has been made and the debate should not start until you get the proposal and read it.)] (3) One person feels that net.announce should contain only short messages, with a pointer elsewhere if necessary. [I, being the moderator, disagree, but if others feel this way or think the current situation is better, I'd like to hear by mail.] (4) The following analogy: Mis-use of net.general path through the flower bed ---------------------- = --------------------------- "real" net users head gardener of the park The author goes on to suggest that we pave net.general for what it has become and create another group for the others. (Whether net.announce+net.wanted is sufficient for this isn't clear.) [The problem here is that all.general,all.announce is in the default path of lots of news implementations out there, and all the people who don't know enough to unsubscribe from net.general will get all this trash. Based on the stats Rick Adams posts, I don't think we can depend on people to upgrade their software to take net.general out of the default subscription.] (5) A moderated newsgroup may not be an open enough forum for important but controversial subjects (e.g. the transcripts of Tim Maroney.) [Very true - I probably never would have let even a pointer to this stuff through, as I don't think it belonged on Usenet. Of course, this is why we have unmoderated newsgroups. Certainly neither net.announce nor net.wanted would have been appropriate here, perhaps net.sources with a pointer in net.news.] (6) There is still a need for a newsgroup for announcements and items of interest to "nearly everyone" (as opposed to "everyone", the current charter of net.announce.) [I claim that something that should be of interest to "nearly everyone" belongs in net.announce, you can always use your 'n' key.] (7) A claim is made that discussions should only take place in one newsgroup, and that the followup command should only let one newsgroup go on the followup. [I realize that some discussions get out of hand when they start in 5 groups, 2 of which are appropriate, and take off, boring the inhabitants of the other 3. But if you forbid multiple newsgroups, you see people posting the same announcement umpteen times to umpteen newsgroups, and there's no way to prevent it from showing up to each person in each newsgroup. People mostly do this for announcements, to get wide circulation, and it's when the discussion takes off that it gets annoying - I guess this was the motivation for restricting followups to one newsgroup.] (8) A feeling that overall traffic won't go down, it will just move to other groups. [Good! This is the whole point - we're not trying to cut phone bills here, but protect users who are being offered this junk by default and don't know any better. I doubt net.general accounts for a significant fraction of the phone bills, except for that 4.2BSD review I saw today, but it does account for a significant fraction of the time of casual readers.] (9) It's hard to change the subscriptions of all the people that are out there and really WANT net.general, if it gets renamed. (10) Another European suggesting that we create world.all. [In a related comment today, someone suggested that the default distribution be only within your state. Personally I don't think there should be a default distribution, or maybe just one for general-purpose or high volume newsgroups.] (11) Have someone volunteer to sift through net.general for candidates for net.announce. [Fine, but I don't have the time. If someone wants to volunteer...] In summary, it's obvious (to me at least) that we should get rid of net.general and replace it with something else. It isn't obvious that we want to get rid of net.followup, as many people didn't address that, and I suspect their opinion might change depending on the exact nature of the solution to net.general. Let's look at the reorganization proposal when it comes out, and if that doesn't happen, we can look at less radical ways to move net.general. Mark Horton