Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!dino!ceres!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!apple!chuq
From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: soc vs talk (was Re: soc.drugs)
Message-ID: <38445@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 8 Feb 90 07:13:01 GMT
References: <131368@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <1990Feb8.063402.20723@agate.berkeley.edu>
Organization: Fictional Reality: where your dreams can come true
Lines: 31

gsmith@garnet.berkeley.edu (Gene W. Smith) writes:

>>    What is the distinction between the soc and talk heirarchies?  From
>>their names, I would think that 'talk' is more for 'chatting' and
>>conversations about topics, while 'soc' it would seem, would be more
>>for societal/social issues

>  I dunno about this. "Talk" has the political groups, whereas
>"soc" has social chat clubs like soc.singles, the various ethnic
>and gender and lifestyle clubs, as well as a few religion groups.

It was pragmatic: stuff went into talk because it had a high signal/noise
ratio (or it figured to when created). Stuff went into soc if it were more
likely to have discussions in it than noise, or if the sponsors didn't want
to go into talk (the large majority of talk groups wnet in there during the
Great Renaming).

That way, sites that didn't want the noise groups could simply turn off
talk.all rather than having to write funky sys files to kill the groups off
one by one.

No great philosophy, unless you want to relate it to a Bill Cosby quote:
"Parents don't want justice. Parents want quiet"


-- 

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.