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From: minow@decvax.UUCP (Martin Minow)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: net overload-- comments and suggestions
Message-ID: <49@decvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Mar-85 18:53:06 EST
Article-I.D.: decvax.49
Posted: Fri Mar  1 18:53:06 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Mar-85 03:20:22 EST
References: <2404@nsc.UUCP>
Lines: 35

May I be permitted to define net.wobegon?  I don't subscribe
to net.news (and deleted net.followup from the newsgroups as
it's busy enough already), so flame to me directly.

Please note that I use net.wobegon as a metaphor for all the
little-used newsgroups that have a widespread, but very
narrowly-focussed readership.  Other examples would include
net.bugs.uucp and net.lang.forth.

Chuki argues in part that the existance of net.wobegon precludes
in some way the possibliity of adding a "useful" newsgroup such
as net.sources.msdos.  Since net.sources.mac and net.sources.games
were recently added, this seems unlikely.  In both cases, a
general-audience newsgroup was split when the number of
submissions on a narrowly-focussed topic increased beyond a
"background-noise" level.  The same thing happened a few years
ago to net.music and net.religion.

Since, with readnews, you can unsubscribe by a single keystroke,
the existance of many groups shouldn't be seen as a problem
(unless you try to read everything) -- assuming that discussions
stay reasonably localized.  This seems to happen for the technical
newsgroups (net.lang.c, for example), and works reasonably well
for multiple postings to, for example, net.med and net.legal.
There are, of course, counter examples:  usenet readers probably
recall a recent discussion of celtic astronomy that took place
in just about every newsgroup EXCEPT net.wobegon.  (Another
reason to keep it: it gives us a place to hide:-)

In summary, if usenet retains non-work-related news groups, there
should be a place for a few widespread fanatics to gather without
interference from/to the rest of the crowd.

Martin Minow
decvax!minow