Xref: utzoo news.groups:18262 comp.sys.mac:49614 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hoptoad!tim From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Comp.Sys.Mac reorg -- 2/23/90 update Message-ID: <10522@hoptoad.uucp> Date: 1 Mar 90 00:24:48 GMT References: <38902@apple.Apple.COM> <38904@apple.Apple.COM> <710@dino.cs.iastate.edu> Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco Lines: 47 Well, it appears that my argument is being ignored. That's too bad. I've made it twice before in my net career; both times it was ignored, and both times, it turned out to be correct. The previous times were, first, on Fidonet, with the division of an occult newsgroup into three parts, one for occult discussion, one for social discussion within the community, and one for magazine-quality articles and not for any kind of discussion. I predicted major problems with careless users, and I was correct. Within a month after the split, the "magazine" section was flooded with discussion, and even now some two years later various sysop measures have not kept discussion out of it. And of course, users don't seem to get the idea that meta-discussions flaming people for their inappropriate postings in the magazine section are also inappropriate for the magazine section. Meanwhile, the occult and social groups are nearly indistinguishable in content, and anyone interested in either one has to read both to avoid missing pertinent messages. The second time I made this prediction was with respect to USENET's alt.prose and alt.prose.d; I held that people would largely not respect the difference, and while it's not as serious a problem with only two groups as it was with Magick-net's three groups or as it will be with the proposed six to ten Macintosh groups, there is still a large proportion of the alt.prose traffic that is discussion and criticism which belongs on alt.prose.d. This is not a speculative model; it is an empirical observation. Introducing fine distinctions between closely related groups has not worked in the past, and it is unlikely to work now, especially among a user community as obviously undisciplined as comp.sys.mac users. I share with everyone else the wish that it were possible to read comp.sys.mac; but I am not so blinded by wishful thinking that I think tens of thousands of network users are going to jump up and salute a reorganization proposal and exercise eternal vigilance to preserve it. If comp.sys.mac users were this fastidious or this considerate, we wouldn't have the problem with comp.sys.mac as it is. As it is, if we pursue this course of wishful thinking, we will have just what my observations predict: eight unreadable newsgroups filled with meta-flames about inappropriate posting and wide cross-posting, to replace one newsgroup which, though voluminous and unwieldy, at least is usually not dominated by meta-discussion and off-topic messages. -- Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com "Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained..." - Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"