Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!nrl-cmf!ukma!simon
From: simon@ms.uky.edu (Simon Gales)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Creating a new newsgroup
Keywords: Etiquitte, Manners & Too_Many_Articles
Message-ID: <10958@s.ms.uky.edu>
Date: 24 Jan 89 03:51:17 GMT
References: <657@ur-cc.UUCP> <670001@hpvcfs1.HP.COM>
Reply-To: simon@ms.uky.edu (Simon Gales)
Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences
Lines: 48

In article <670001@hpvcfs1.HP.COM> johne@hpvcfs1.HP.COM (John Eaton) writes:
>(In some article someone writes:)
><
>< The problem has been (my opinion) that we have called for the
>< creation of umpteen different newsgroups.  I read this newsgroup
><
>Right on! Make it clear that there a two groups called Programing and
>Programing_BAR and that nothing should be cross posted between them.

How would the 'no-cross-posting' rule be enforced?  Remember, there is no
central authority for this net, keeping cross-posted articles from being
cross-posted seems to be impossible.  Yes, I know we can kill them
with the newsreader (rn, etc), but they still have to be sent and the 
overall network load would still increase.

I think if we split the group, the number of postings would increase,
probably along with a shrinking info-to-b.s. ratio, no matter how many
groups were made.

There are also a lot of ignorant postings in this group, ranging from 
BBS advertisments to forsale notices.  Half the articles I've read have
blank lines added so that postnews wont reject their article - just so
they can repeat for the n'th time something we've already read n times.
(That pointer arithmetic discussion is now in my kill file %-)

We can rig up fancy kill processing until we only see the articles we
like, but the group/net will eventually collapse unless we can fix
the problem at its source - the posters.  Some good rules to follow
are:
	(1) Read net.ettiquite stuff until you've memorized it.
	(2) Re-read your article twice after writing/re-writing it.
	(3) Include only the parts of another article that you need,
		 (not their signature!) usually just 3-10 lines would do.
		 [try to summarize what they said if you can]

(And for the binarys' groups:)
	(4) Instead of posting to ask for reposts, why not email to the
		 original poster?  I hate postings asking for reposts, can you
		 imagine what would happen if everyone responded?  Makes one 
		 thankful for a moderator!

These seem reasonable to me, and it should make reading 50 articles a
day a lot easier 8-).

-- 
/------------------------------------------------------------------------\
  Simon Gales@University of Ky
  {rutgers, uunet}!ukma!simon  -  simon@ms.uky.edu  -  simon@UKMA.BITNET