Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mstar!mstar.morningstar.com!bob
From: bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: late votes for *.AQUARIA
Message-ID: <BOB.89Dec27134726@volitans.MorningStar.Com>
Date: 27 Dec 89 18:47:26 GMT
References: <3181@cpoint.UUCP> <70VMJ@splut.conmicro.com>
	<37433@apple.Apple.COM> <23700@gryphon.COM> <759@wang.UUCP>
Sender: news@MorningStar.COM (USENET Administrator)
Reply-To: bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield)
Organization: Morning Star Technologies
Lines: 32
In-reply-to: fitz@wang.UUCP's message of 27 Dec 89 00:07:52 GMT

In article <759@wang.UUCP> fitz@wang.UUCP (Tom Fitzgerald) writes:
   Phase 1:
   [... tech.* and fun.* work as "intended" ...]

   Phase 2:
   [... wizards stop reading and answering fun.*; beginners' fish die ...]

   Phase 3:
   [... beginners move to tech.*, wizards resent the intrusion ...]

   Phase 4:
   [... tech.* becomes beginner questions & wizard flames, fish die ...]

   Phases 3 and 4 repeat indefinitely.  The only way out is to create
   a single fishy group, or to moderate sci.aquaria.

Remember comp.unix.{wizards,questions}?  comp.graphics{.wizards}?
comp.sys.ibm-pc.tech?  comp.sys.mac.programmer?  Or any number of
similar closely-related groups?  Self-selecting constituencies don't
work, for just the reasons you describe.  Arbitrarily segregated
communities will find a way to re-mix because the collective benefits
of topical community outweigh the disadvantages of segmented,
hypothetically reduced traffic.  Luckily, fish don't usually die as a
result, else things would smell a lot worse than they do now.

{sci,rec}.aquaria isn't an intentional distinction for the purpose of
smoothing the flow of discussion, else the above points would have
arisen and the idea quickly discarded.  The existence of the two
groups is the result of ego-political machinations and bidirectional
whining about subversion.  Don't try to use rational thought to
explain them, or to convince either to go away.  The net is stuck with
two (or three, depending upon how you count them) fish groups now.