Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!olsen
From: olsen@XN.LL.MIT.EDU (Jim Olsen)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Binary groups need their own hierarchy
Keywords: bin.* hierarchy
Message-ID: <1008@xn.LL.MIT.EDU>
Date: 24 May 88 01:27:19 GMT
References: <397@pan.UUCP> <5284@sdcrdcf.UUCP> <231@mcf.UUCP> <4435@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com> <2676@louie.udel.EDU>
Reply-To: olsen@ll-xn.UUCP (Jim Olsen)
Organization: MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA
Lines: 19

In article <2676@louie.udel.EDU> cranor@udel.EDU (Chuck Cranor) writes:
>By putting binaries in thier own top level it requires action to
>*receive* binary news groups rather than block them.  It's a great idea.

It's a terrible idea.  We should not tinker with the newsgroup hierarchy
without good reason.  This proposed change will create no new capability,
and will not clarify the hierarchy, which is already quite clear.

This proposal would benefit only one class of sites: those who don't want
binaries, and want comp.*, but don't want to bother excluding
comp.binaries.  Balanced against this, we have all the sites which *do*
want binaries, who will be required to perform otherwise unnecessary
changes to their sys files.

If this suggestion had come up during the Great Newsgroup Reorganization,
it might have been worth considering, since people had to change their
sys files anyway.  Now that the hierarchy is stable, it is silly to
impose a piece of useless make-work on news administrators who are
already satisfied with their news configuration.