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From: karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups
Subject: Re: Results of dead groups survey.
Summary: Don't be so hasty.
Message-ID: <1432@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 11 Apr 89 02:59:21 GMT
References: <11291@well.UUCP>
Sender: USENET News System <news@Portia.stanford.edu>
Reply-To: karish@forel.stanford.edu (Chuck Karish)
Organization: Mindcraft, Inc.
Lines: 28

In article <11291@well.UUCP> Jef Poskanzer <jef@helios.ee.lbl.gov> wrote:
>A little over two weeks ago, I set up a little survey of some of the
>low-traffic Usenet groups...

>First let's take a look at the numerical results.  I saved all the
>relevant messages from all the groups in question for the two week
>period.  This includes email to me, postings to the newsgroup, and
>for unmoderated groups, postings following up my query.

	Some of the groups you chose to study are worthwhile because
	their content is valuable, not because their volume is
	overwhelming.  The omes I have in mind are comp.laser-printers
	and comp.protocols.kermit.  If these weren't newsgroups, I'd
	have to be on both mailing lists, which would be a pain for the
	moderators, because I'm hardly alone in needing this
	information.

	Unless someone can demonstrate that low-volume newsgroups waste
	more resources than I think they do (next to none), I'll
	refrain from deleting them, and will advise others to do the
	same.

	Two weeks is a ridiculously short baseline for a survey,
	anyway.  There was a digest posted to the laser printers group
	not long before this period.

	Chuck Karish	hplabs!hpda!mindcrf!karish	(415) 493-7277
			karish@forel.stanford.edu