Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!decvax!cca!ima!inmet!tower
From: tower@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Nuke net.{general,followup} - (nf)
Message-ID: <1532@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Jun-84 07:43:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: inmet.1532
Posted: Wed Jun 20 07:43:24 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jun-84 06:22:11 EDT
Lines: 33

#R:nsc:-107100:inmet:7000063:000:1243
inmet!tower    Jun 19 12:38:00 1984

A good idea. It will take a long time to really work.

Why?

Many local and regional distributions have a *.general, that serve the
same purpose as net.general. The extrapolation upwards is natural. So,
net.general will continue to be used at many sites by many casual USENET
users. Thus, it will continue to be propagated into USENET, as net.trivia
has been for a long time!

I suggest instead:

1) That the official definition of net.general be changed to be closer to
net.misc, and contain a pointer to net.announce. This change should be made
in alice!alb semi-monthly list of groups, the emily-post document and the
other documents posted in net.announce.newuser. It should also be posted to
net.general regularly for several months.

2) Someone screen net.general for possible re-postings to net.announce
for a few months.

3) net.followup also have its description changed: to something like:
net.folllowup	An out-of-date newsgroup used to contain followups to
		net.general.
When traffic gets to zero for a while, it can be rm'ed.

4) If nsc!chuqui gets his new news software up, the backbone sites
can rename all articles for net.general and net.followup to net.misc.

-len tower        {ihnp4,harpo}!inmet!tower        Cambridge, MA