Xref: utzoo news.groups:8531 news.admin:5309
Path: utzoo!yunexus!stpl!yunccn!shields
From: shields@yunccn.UUCP (Paul Shields)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Re: Proposed OFFICIAL Newsgroup Creation/Deletion Guidelines
Summary: The need for deleting groups even if there is traffic
Message-ID: <656@yunccn.UUCP>
Date: 27 Mar 89 05:03:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: yunccn.656
References: <1634@ncar.ucar.edu> <18230@gatech.edu>
Organization: York University, Toronto Canada
Lines: 46

In article <18230@gatech.edu>, win@gatech.edu (Win Strickland Jr) writes:
> Here, I agree with some comments made by others, and I think we should
> have some sort of traffic measure which causes this process to initiate
> rather than some person deciding it would be fun to see if a vote would
> fail.  I think Dave Mack proposed some sort of volume requirements over
> a three month period.  Again, we might want to discuss the specific numbers
> in terms of month and volume (5, 10, ? articles), but in general I think
> this might be the way to go.

I think there is a need for deleting some groups even if there is traffic,
if only that the name of the group has grown to be obsolete, and some other
division is apparent, or that there is mass-confusion in general about
the group. 

(I know of so many users who are infinitely confused about the purpose of
 some groups, finding that discussions in those groups don't fit the
 stated purpose, mainly because no one seems to understand what the 
 group is for:

  What is comp.unix.wizards?
  What is rec.humor.d?
  What is the difference between news.admin and news.sysadmin?
  What is news.misc?
  Why is there so much junk in misc.all?
  Are the following language-oriented groups structured correctly?
  (this list made from grepping for lang in /usr/lib/news/newsgroups.)
	comp.ai.nlang-know-rep,	comp.lang.all,
	comp.std.c, comp.sys.transputer,
	sci.lang, sci.lang.japan
  Who should post where?
  Why _do_ we have users cross-posting to 7 or more different groups? 
  Does traffic in some groups always consist of crossposted articles?
  Is this a good thing?
 )

Some newsgroups are nothing but senseless talk.barbarian diatribe. It
seems to me that many of those groups are discussing the SAME things. 
Why not consolodate them?

> I've always wanted to see some sort of guidelines for deleting groups, 
> and I hope we can reach a consensus on this.

Concensus?  It'll never happen. But let's see some policy that can at
least give us some flexibility.
-- 
Paul Shields, shields@yunccn.UUCP