Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Two philosophies of why newsgroups should be created
Message-ID: <3065@looking.UUCP>
Date: 9 Apr 89 23:02:33 GMT
References: <6503@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 77

While there is discussion of the mechanism for figuring out which groups
are good, Gene is right that some discussion of the philosophy behind
how new groups are evaluated is worthwhile.

I have seen two main camps of newsgroup creation philosophy.  They
both have very strong merits.  I have wavered between them myself.

The first camp says "Create only truly necessary groups -- keep the
'namespace' small."

The second camp says, "Create any reasonable group -- what trouble are
small volume groups?"

Oddly enough, the Camp 1 philosphy sprang out of old software limitations.
There were days on the net when a large number of sites (including old
Pdp-11 sites) simply couldn't handle more than 256, and then 512 newsgroups
before they died.   So 'namespace' had to be preserved.

That is gone now, or mostly gone.  Today, however, the argument is that
an explosion of thousands of groups would simply make the net too confusing
to all but the most experienced netters.

To me the most compelling argument for Camp 1 is that new newsgroups
definitely do cause traffic that would not have otherwise existed.  While
some groups might mostly split up traffic, it seems clear to me after 8
years on usenet that new groups do cause more traffic than would have
existed before.

Camp 2 has good arguments as well.   Usenet needs more classification
of articles to allow people to control their reading.  Some groups
are simply too large and noisy to read.  And to me, high volume is the
measure of a bad group, not a good one.

There really is no harm from a small volume subgroup.  Subgroups (level 3
or more) don't confuse the namespace.  And they don't create traffic as
much either.   (This assumes the group can sustain one reader per
long distance link it crosses.  Any group that can't do that should not
be on usenet)

-------------
So what's the answer?  Perhaps some sort of mixture is possible.  On
systems like Compuserve, Genie, Bix, Delphi etc. they divide their groups
up into categories which the sysop controls.  So while they may only have
around 100-200 major goups on such systems, each group has 5 to 15 categories.
The total number of discussion areas can be in the thousands without
confusion.

For example, an "sf-lovers" group would have Star Trek, Doctor Who, Comics,
SF Books, SF Movies, Fandom etc. all in different categories under the one
roof.
--------------
So a possible answer?  Set up a procedure (of some kind, either UNLAB or
another) for the creation of level 1 and level 2 groups.

But for each level 2 group get a single group controller who is free
to create subgroups of level 3 and beyond at will.  This would not be
a moderator who controls messages, just a person who knows the group well
and can tell what groups are good ideas for new traffic.

This does not confuse the namespace, and takes simple decisions out of the
hands of a complex procedure.

At my suggestion, Eric Raymond has put a feature into his TMN news to support
this concept.  Under that system if a message comes in to
rec.arts.sf-lovers.asmiov, and the host does not have that group, but does
have rec.arts.sf-lovers, then it goes into the first higher level group
found, or junk beyond a certain level.  (This is how you finally did it,
right Eric?)

In this way, sites that don't want expanded subgroup namespace don't need
to have it.   Sites that want it get to have it.

Of course, we still need a mechanism for level 2 and (rarely) level 1.
I still suggest UNLAB for level 2, and possibly participatory democracy
of the sysadmins for level 1.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473