Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!ecsvax!bch
From: bch@ecsvax.UUCP (Byron C. Howes)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: comp.women -- moderated groups and the naming hierarchy
Message-ID: <5274@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: 15 Jun 88 13:51:12 GMT
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Lines: 42

Let us, for the moment, try to call things as they actually are.

The proponents of comp.women, myself included, would like to see it in
the comp.* set because, frankly, it gets better distribution.  As the
sysadmin of a site which takes only a limited feed of "serious" groups
(comp,sci,news) I see this as a valid concern.

The opponents of comp.women seem largely to be concerned with the 
misplacement of the newsgroup in the naming hierarchy.  I think this,
too, is a valid concern as it doesn't make sense to dilute the hierarchy
for distributional reasons making it unuseable.

I have not seen anyone suggest that the group is inherently bad or
inappropriate, just inappropriate for the comp.* heirarchy.

What's the problem?  Is there a solution?

Someone facetiously suggested bringing back the mod.* distribution.  I
agree, but I agree seriously.  At one time moderated groups were thought
to be inherently good because they increased the signal-to-noise ratio
of the net while decreasing the volume.  Yet a way to *easily* propagate
and accept moderated groups was not included with the naming hierarchy.

This is a political, more than a technical, problem.  While it is simple
enough to convince my employers to accept comp,sci,misc and mod and to
coordinate the news linkage with our feeding site, it is less easy to
justify accepting newsgroups on a case-by-case basis.  In the olden
days I had a 20 line sys entry for my site of which all but one entry
was to accept unmoderated groups on a group-by-group basis, the one
entry was to accept all moderated groups.  To do the same now would
probably require a larger entry and, frankly, I can't spare the time
to track through which newsgroups are and are not moderated.

While I can't speak for sites other than my own, we would in all
likelihood accept entirely a distribution of moderated groups without
question.  It is my assumption that other sites who do not currently
accept the soc,misc,talk (and possibly alt) distributions would do so
as well.  I don't know that this would solve many problems but it might
at least provide a place for comp.women acceptable to a few more sites.

-- 
Byron C. Howes			  UNC Educational Computing Service
bch@ecsvax.uncecs.edu   |   bch@ecsvax.uucp   |   bch@ecsvax.bitnet