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From: gwangung@milton.acs.washington.edu (Roger Tang)
Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Comp.Sys.Mac reorg -- 2/23/90 update
Message-ID: <2328@milton.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 9 Mar 90 20:59:37 GMT
References: <38902@apple.Apple.COM> <38904@apple.Apple.COM> <710@dino.cs.iastate.edu> <10522@hoptoad.uucp> <1628.25ee76c8@csc.anu.oz> <2839@stl.stc.co.uk> <0Y22XFDxds13@ficc.uu.net> <10720@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: gwangung@milton.acs.washington.edu (Roger Tang)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 30

In article <10720@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes:
>In article <0Y22XFDxds13@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>> >(Stuff about the way that the proposed split will just degenerate, so that 
>>> >we will have to check all of the new groups anyway.)
>>
>>Unfortunately for this theory existing comp.sys splits don't bear this out.
>>For example, tossing comp.sys.amiga and comp.sys.amiga.hardware leaves me
>>with a worthwhile groups with an acceptable volume and signal-to-noise ratio.
>
>Yes, of course.  Again, I don't see you trying to look at the social
>factors involved.  The problem happens when the groups have largely
>overlapping readerships.  This is the distinction between major and
>minor divisions I was making.  No one but programmers reads
>comp.sys.mac.programmer, so there's not a major overlap problem.  The
>proposed maze of Mac groups will, however, have largely overlapping
>readerships, and experience proves that in these cases people will not
>distinguish one group from another very well when deciding where to put
>their messages.

	I have to agree with Tim (surprise, surprise!).  I just don't
think there's enough differentiation between the groups to make it
useful for people to have separate groups.  Even now, it  seems to mee
a good third to a half of the mac.hardware posts are posted to c.s.m
and don't even make it to c.s.mac.hardware.

	To put it another way, the splits are LOGICAL---but will they be
used by the majority or even a large plurality of users?  I don't get
the feel that they will.  I'm perfectly willing to be convinced otherwise,
but from where I stand, I'm not so sure that this reorganization will
be doing anything.