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From: alcmist@ssc-vax.UUCP (Frederick Wamsley)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Instructions for net.general (quotes at end)
Message-ID: <354@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-Jan-85 17:24:04 EST
Article-I.D.: ssc-vax.354
Posted: Sun Jan 20 17:24:04 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Jan-85 05:38:06 EST
References: <336@ssc-vax.UUCP> <711@cbosgd.UUCP> <3283@alice.UUCP>
Organization: Boeing Aerospace Co., Seattle, WA
Lines: 61

Mark Horton and Adam Buchsbaum have objected to the idea of posting
guidelines for the use of net.general in a new subgroup of net.general.
Their major concerns are that nobody would pay attention, and that
anybody who would listen to reason has already been enlightened by
net.announce.newusers.  Their exact words are below.

Whenever Chuq flames in net.general about inappropriate messages there, 
the traffic goes down for a few weeks.  Apparently many people do pay attention
to what they read.  Certainly net.announce.newusers has helped 
many newcomers.

I'm alarmed to find myself disagreeing with people who know the net as
well as Mark and Adam do.  I think they are simply underestimating the
ignorance of much of the net population.  I seriously think there are
many people who don't read net.announce.newusers
*because they don't know it exists!*

I'm thinking of casual users at sites with old software and careless
administrators.  They start by typing readnews with no arguments, and
never see any group but net.general.  They have no idea of the extent
of the net. Such people obviously exist, since we keep seeing requests
in net.general for the list of newsgroups.  For everyone who asks there
are probably dozens more who don't ask.

We need to reach these people before they try to sell their '62
Chevys.  Net.general or a subgroup is the only way to do it.

Adam is right that a new group, net.general.newusers, is overkill.
Would regular articles in net.general be better?

Nothing short of a rmgroup will get rid of intentional mispostings.
Everything I have said is based on my assumption that ignorance causes
a big fraction of the problems with net.general.  If the net experts
think otherwise, I withdraw my proposal.
	-Fred Wamsley

From Mark Horton:  
> Posting instructions has never worked before.  Most of the problem 
> comes from people who don't know how to read instructions.  
> 
> [followed by a suggestion for a mod.general, to handle messages of 
>  wide interest but not important enough for net.announce] 
>       Mark 
From Adam Buchsbaum:  
>What a waste of a newsgroup!  The guidelines for using net.general 
>can be summarized in one article.  You want to create a group just 
>for that?  Come on!  
>
>The solution to the whole problem of wasted traffic on the net (of
>which net.general is just a small part) can never be solved by
>creating more newsgroups.  On the contrary, that just increases the
>problem.  If people aren't reading net.announce.newsusers, then they
>aren't going to read net.general.newsusers just because it's in a
>different place.
-- 
UUCP:{ihnp4,decvax}!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!alcmist ARPA:ssc-vax!alcmist@uw-beaver
I am not speaking as a representative of the Boeing Company or any of 
its divisions.  Opinions expressed are solely my own (if that) and
have nothing to do with company policy or with the opinions of my
coworkers, or those of the staff of the Software Support Center VAX.
	(did I leave anyone out? :-))