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From: jaw@ames.UUCP (James A. Woods)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Net.software.projects group idea--Not a good idea
Message-ID: <1108@ames.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Aug-85 19:50:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.1108
Posted: Fri Aug 23 19:50:12 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Aug-85 13:34:18 EDT
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Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
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# "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent" -- eleanor roosevelt

again, lauren, in his very admirable (but nevertheless quixotic) role
as "the voice of sanity" on usenet, has perceived the essence of the matter.

net.projects is simply too general, and would inevitably produce the
flotsam now seen even in the likes of (the presumably staid) net.database.
mod.projects is more like it, but even here, mailing lists arising
from individual technical groups would do the job fine.

for example, last year, folks talked about news compression a bit
in net.news.  someone put the question to net.news about whether anyone was
working on same.  the ieee computer article came out, code was posted
to net.sources, and an international project to improve the utility
was carried out -- first, by a small cadre of correspondents connected
via a complete graph, and then, through the traditional moderated "reflector"
style mailing list.  if the "compress" discussions were to be net-wide,
then thousands would be bored by implementation details.  (to polish an
apple here, the intrepid lempel-ziv freaks will always be in the unique
position of having a "negative" byte-count associated with their net verbiage.)

i myself am not sure whether the freeway hypothesis holds (more groups
cause more congestion), or whether traffic is a linear (or asymptotic)
function of uucp logins independent of group cardinality.  i'm only protesting
about net.projects here, not new group formation.

-- james a. woods  (ames!jaw)