Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!spdcc!merk!xylogics!world!bzs
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: A USENet domain (was Re: Domain Charters)
Message-ID: <1990Feb27.232423.16107@world.std.com>
Date: 27 Feb 90 23:24:23 GMT
References: <_.W1K12xds8@ficc.uu.net> <1990Feb23.202301.3363@everexn.uucp> <38951@apple.Apple.COM> <11012@saturn.ADS.COM> <38983@apple.Apple.COM> <103276@looking.on.ca> <15208@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Followup-To: news.groups
Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die
Lines: 51
In-Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET's message of 27 Feb 90 15:48:10 GMT


From: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
>In article <103276@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:
>>I am sorry folks, deciding what names to give to newsgroups just isn't
>>what USENET's about.  Oddly, reading news.* seems to give me the impression
>>that everybody who posts here thinks it is.
>
>Sigh.
>
>If you want to read about toy boats, read rec.toy.boats.  If you want to
>read about cooking or VMS or astronomy or APL or tai chi, go read the
>appropriate group.  But if you want to read about news administration
>issues, read THIS group.  And newsgroup naming is an important
>administration issue.

No it's not, newsgroup naming doesn't seem terribly important to
anyone I see posting about it.

It just seems like an idle game that merits little thought other than
doing something simplistic and obvious, mostly resembling the same
thought given to choosing variable names in a program or file names.

The ideas are very shallow, to be blunt.

The library systems of the world have spent several hundred years
developing topical naming systems. Even if duplicating that work isn't
quite right it might be nice to see if anyone might consider existing
efforts like this before making their suggestions.

But y'all would have to get up, walk over to a library, maybe ask the
librarian about subjects like this (not necessarily limited to library
science, but it might be a place to start) and go read about it and
develop some understanding of such systems. I know, it's easier to
just invent systems on the fly, at a reasonable typing rate.

Or, barring that, someone might give it a little deeper thought than
"maybe we should create a usenet.* top level!"

Anyhow, I'm not convinced in the slightest that it's important to
anyone here, except as a little game to play with other people on this
group for a few minutes at a time. Oh, they may get emotional about
the issue, but that's hardly a substitute for sincere thought.

The next proposal taken seriously for a USENET renaming should be
of publication quality.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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