Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!seal.ucsc.edu!ulmo
From: ulmo@seal.ucsc.edu (Brad Allen)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: A Thought Experiment about News.Groups
Message-ID: <26411@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 5 Jun 89 10:36:14 GMT
References: <371@odi.ODI.COM>
Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV
Organization: no affiliation with UCSC
Lines: 34

I agree with you.

However, I think most of what you want is already doable:
most people >can< make their own list, and offer subscription to it.
This can be gatewayed to USENET bidirectionally, and the resultant
groups can be NNTP'd anywhere you want.

Fluff:

What you want is a standard for making this work better
(more automated, easier to use, and many things fixed in USENET).
Well, I agree.

A few months ago I started using much less USENET and have since
advocated and attempted subscription to mailing lists,
since these mailing lists fix so many things.  Bandwidth be damned:
It sits on the disk until >I< read it; people are polite, informative,
and address eachother without fear; lists have specified known purposes
where the topic is known and yet not too narrow;
answers get POSTED TO THE LIST; etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

Well, ever since I found other NNTP site servers with full news feeds on them
and longer disk caching, I've been liking USENET software so much more ...

One of the best setups I see out there is:
Gateway just about everything via both mailing lists and USENET software,
and you will have a good currently-achievable nicely interoperating system.  
I see this at Standford, where they have about 30 local newsgroups
(with various ranges -- departmental, campus wide, smaller, larger, etc.
probably all with various distributions), which are all gatewayed well enough
between USENET and mailing lists that in one week I see NO questions about
how to use this system posted in their su.computers news group
(which is actually fun to read!).  It just works.  I see similar response
from the mail gateways on UCBVAX.