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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84 chuqui version 1.7 9/23/84; site nsc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!nsc!chuqui
From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: new groups, mail lists,inefficiency
Message-ID: <2450@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-Mar-85 01:59:40 EST
Article-I.D.: nsc.2450
Posted: Sat Mar  9 01:59:40 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Mar-85 05:25:46 EST
References: <1631D3U@PSUVM>
Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: The Village
Lines: 55
Summary: 

In article <1631D3U@PSUVM> D3U@PSUVM.BITNET writes:
>    The problem I see with replacing news groups with mailing lists is that the
>list is essentially or actually invisible to anyone not on the list. Perhaps we
>need a posting of mailing lists. 

I should point out that I am maintaining a list of known mailing lists
available on the uucp network, and post it to mod.newslists about every two
weeks. People can track down mailing lists through that posting and ask the
contact to add them to it.

>Chuq comments that there are too many vaguely defined groups. Maybe. But it is
>also the case that many topics overlap. For example there is currently a call
>for discussion on starting net.cogsci. There is already net.ai and net.cogeng
>and net.philosophy and net.psychology.

Ambiguous topic names are our single largest problem on the net right now
in my eyes. There are simply too many places for many topics to show up,
and none of them are 'best' for it. Some places are simply misnames--
net.nlang is an example-- I don't really remember why all of the subgroups
that should be in net.culture (net.culture.greek, etc) are in net.nlang,
but they really have nothing to do with natural language. How about
net.usoft? Nmemonic, no? (Its about microsoft software, obviously-- but
that's wrong, too!). 

What we've done is create a lot of special purpose topics without properly
setting up the upper level groups needed to allow general purpose topics as
well-- if we do that, the need for special purpose topics goes away unless
they generate enough interest to warrant splitting them off. I'm looking at
the name space now, I think I'll have a first draft of a suggested
re-arrangment for public comment soon (It isn't an easy task,
unfortunately). The total number of groups will probably stay about the
same, or maybe even grow a bit-- whatever it takes to rebuild the name
space coherently.

>    The presence of a news group encourages traffic. For instance net.music is
>subdivided, the latest sub group being net.music.synth. It seems that there are
>a lot more articles on synthesis now than before the group was created, and it
>grew all at once to a well used group. Some rarely used groups such as .poetry
>have justification in that although few post to it, it is also true that few
>are poets or are brave enough to post their own poems.

The fact that net.music.synth has a lot of volume shows that there is a lot
of interest for it, so creating it was a good idea. If the volume goes away
with time (as, for example, it has with net.games.go) it should also go
away again, and the discussion merged back with the parent group. We
currently don't have a good policy for doing that, but I think it is time
for doing so. A big problem with that is, of course, the fact that most
groups don't have appropriate parents to merge into, and probably should.

chuq
-- 
Chuq Von Rospach, National Semiconductor
{cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui   nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA

Be seeing you!