Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!apple!chuq From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: Splitting Comp.Sys.Mac again (was Re: Too many messages in ....) Message-ID: <38423@apple.Apple.COM> Date: 7 Feb 90 20:06:30 GMT References: <1688@xn.LL.MIT.EDU> Organization: Fictional Reality: where your dreams can come true Lines: 66 delaney@xn (John R. Delaney) writes: >I agree that the comp.sys.mac group seems to need splitting, but I am >not sure that will really reduce the traffic in the group. We already >see a number of messages in comp.sys.mac which belong IMHO else, e.g., >Mac for sale notices (properly in .forsale), questions >about which disk drive to buy (properly in comp.sys.mac.hardware), >questions about what compiler (properly in comp.sys.mac.programmer), and >questions about Hypercard (properly in comp.sys.mac.hypercard). The more >we split the basic group, the more of this leakage back we can expect. Yes and no. Every time we have split the group, volume has dropped as messages move over. It's not 100%, but with intelligent planning we can make the system work. I agree the forsale messages should be elsewhere, but they won't go -- unless we create comp.sys.mac.forsale, which I think is a bad idea. >Unless the basic group is moderated. And I don't think that anyone would >want that. Moderation won't work. It'd basically imply that someone (or small group of someones) would have to moderate the entire subtree, passing messages back and forth among themselves to the right place. With the volume, it'd be horror for the moderator (take a look at comp.sys.sun for an idea of the problems and delays that can happen). An alternative, and something I was planning on suggesting once we had a better feel for where c.s.m was going, was to get a small group of people toghether and build an "introduction to c.s.m" document that could be posted on a monthly basis to introduce people to the hierarchy and how to use it. Also, I hope, posting answers to common questions. That'll take up a good part of the need for moderation (I hope). I'm not really in favor of building a large number of new groups -- for one thing, the guidelines are based on building a group at a time, and I'm not sure whether we want to try for a multi-group proposal because I'm not sure that we could write up a reasonable, acceptable and non-controversial proposal. Something to research and look at. Besides, I don't think it's necessary. I think we can do it the way we always have -- with one or perhaps a few well-chosen names. I'm thinking something on the order of: comp.sys.mac.help comp.sys.mac.wanted comp.sys.mac.d (comp.sys.mac.flame? c.s.m.editorials?) any of those groups would split off a large piece of the traffic in c.s.m. Between adding the groups c.s.m.help and c.s.m.wanted and an introduction document, I think we can make c.s.m livable again for a while. I don't think that doing a lot of highly specific creations (.font, .spreadsheet, .wordproc, .init, .cdev, etc) is a good idea, because I think that'll be more likely to cause cross-posting than building gerneral, independent groupings with a broad topic range. Remember, nothing we do will get us 100% effectiveness. What we need to look for is something that's easy for beginners to understand and will be mostly used by most people most of the time. -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> chuq@apple.com <+> [This is myself speaking] Rumour has it that Larry Wall, author of RN, is a finalist in the race for the Nobel Peace Prize for his invention of the kill file.