Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!tale From: tale@cs.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: CALL FOR DISCUSSION: talk.religion.pagan (UNMODERATED) Message-ID: Date: 2 Feb 90 20:11:35 GMT References: <464@everex.UUCP> <4087@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <8053@shlump.nac.dec.com> Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY Lines: 46 In <8053@shlump.nac.dec.com> burch@quik07.enet.dec.com (Ben Burch) writes: > I agree that we need a newsgroup, and although I earlier (this morning) > brought up the subject of an alt.religion.pagan group, I am appalled > at the connectivity of the altnet. Fine. Be "appalled". Here, let me (mis-)use some statistics so we can see how justified that is. This is from the most recent readership report posted by Brian Reid to news.lists. Average propagation of alt groups is in the 75-80% for generally accepted groups; alt.religion.pagan could be one of those groups. Average propagation of talk groups is about 85%, but there are a couple of cases of alt groups enjoying wider distribution than talk groups. alt.sex is the second most highly read group on the net. Three alt groups have higher popularity than even the first ranked talk group, talk.bizarre. The most highly ranked religion group, talk.religion.misc, is less read than fifteen alt groups. I don't think that there is much cause to be appalled, nor do I think that making it an alt group would make any significant difference concerning the readership of the group. > Many times messages are confined to some small provice of sites, but > (a paradox) replies to them spread far and wide. This is a general problem on USENET. If an article made it to a site, a reply to it with the same disrtibution should theoretically go all of the same places that it went. Batches get lost, people change distribution, and other random events can screw this up. Say an article arrived at site moby from site foo; foo is also feeding bar and baz. That article should go on to bar and baz if they should get the group/distribution that it was posted to. A follow-up that had the same group/distribution would have to pass the same criteria to move on to them. > The question (for the net.gods) is; Can we propose an unmoderated > newsgroup so close on the heels of the defeat of a moderated one of > similar description? It is not generally accepted; it seems to me that "How to Create a New Newsgroup" used to say that a six month wait was required after a failed proposal, but that isn't present in there any more. At any rate, there will certainly be some people who would cry "Foul!" if you tried it again so soon. Dave -- (setq mail '("tale@cs.rpi.edu" "tale@ai.mit.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet")) "Nice plant. Looks like a table cloth."