Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP 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!