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From: spaf@gatech.CSNET (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: The Great Net Cleanup Part II
Message-ID: <813@gatech.CSNET>
Date: Mon, 12-Aug-85 23:12:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: gatech.813
Posted: Mon Aug 12 23:12:31 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Aug-85 01:26:26 EDT
References: <696@gatech.CSNET> <697@gatech.CSNET>
Organization: The Clouds Project, School of ICS, Georgia Tech
Lines: 195
Summary: summary of responses

Well, I have received a great deal of mail (well into the
hundreds, I believe) as a result of my articles about deleting
groups.

I am glad that enough people are willing to take a few moments to
write something, but a mite distressed at the flood of mail
I received (and that I could not possibly answer individually).
I was also very pleased with the general tone of the majority
of the responses.  Normally, when I suggest something of
this type, I get lots of nasty mail.

I posted the original suggestion about deleting some groups to solicit
some feedback and to investigate the possibility of cleaning up some
"deadwood" groups.  I also wanted to remind people that the groups
existed and possibly stir up some postings. The comments I received
ranged from long arguments to simple pleas.  I received many requests
to keep the following groups: net.notes, net.bugs.v7, net.rec.birds,
net.lang.apl, net.rec.scuba, net.rec.skydive, net.math.symbolic,
net.decus, and net.games.go (in fact, for most of those groups, I
received more letters than there have been articles posted in the last
6 months...interpret that as you will).  I got only one or two requests
to keep net.theater, net.usoft, and net.std.  I got no requests asking
to keep net.micro.432.  Therefore, I will be sending out "rmgroup"
messages on those 4. If interest can be shown by more than 2 or
3 people in the future, we can always recreate those groups.

I got a number of similar comments and questions which I'd like to
summarize (and respond to) here.  I also got some comments specific
to certain groups, and I'll paraphrase those here.


Why delete low volume groups?
    Currently, the only criteria we have for deleting a group is if
    it falls inactive.  It isn't sensible to delete a very active
    group (although it might be better for the net if we did delete
    some high-volume groups like net.flame and net.religion; but
    that's a different story).  The groups I mentioned haven't
    had much activity recently and therefore appeared to be good
    candidates.

But what harm does it do to leave them?
    It is important that we continue to make some attempt to
    trim the net.  There is an incredible number of groups
    currently in existence, and just leaving "dead" groups around
    is wasteful.  

    We require a demonstrated need to create new groups.  We should
    likewise require some demonstrated need to keep groups around.
    Admittedly, the activity of a group is not a perfect measure,
    but it is the only one I can apply right now.

    Furthermore, the argument can be made that we should attempt
    to keep the name space of newsgroups as small as practical so
    that the average user will be able to better determine the
    appropriate groups for posting.  Again, I think this is a bigger
    issue and gets into the whole problem with the naming hierarchy
    for news, so I won't go into it here.

The groups you targeted have a seasonal audience.
    Maybe so, but that audience is extremely small.  None of those
    groups has seen much activity in the past few years (or since
    their creation, whichever came last).  If a flood of articles
    on any of those groups would occur once semester-oriented schools
    come back into session, we can recreate the groups.  Again,
    let's demonstrate a REAL need for them. Have any of you ever
    heard of "zero-based" budgeting?

Those groups have a higher signal/noise ratio than the other groups --
they should be judged differently.
    Perhaps so.  I'm not going to pretend that I am in position
    (or that ANYONE is) to judge the true value of any of these
    groups.  I would agree that something like net.lang.apl might
    seem to be worth more than a net.flame (for example), but that
    is just my particular orientation.  In the context of the net,
    it is really difficult to make such a judgment *in relation to
    the entire net readership.*

    If these groups work best with a small readership, and since
    they seem to enjoy such a small posting audience, it might be
    better to have them as moderated groups or mailing lists...or so I
    might argue.  Comments?

Just who are you anyway?  What gives you the authority to suggest
deleting MY favorite group?
    I'm a net user, just like the rest of you.  I have been on the net
    for almost 3 years, and I help to administer the news on about 8
    sites around here.  I also happen to maintain the "semi-official"
    list of newsgroups.  Those things don't grant me any special
    authority.  They do, however, give me a little bit of a different
    perspective than many net users -- not necessarily a better
    perspective, just a different one.

    Anyone can suggest that a newsgroup be deleted.  And anyone who
    knows the format can actually put together a "rmgroup" message and
    distribute it.  I happen to believe it is better to follow accepted
    procedure and get public comment.  No one else has indicated an
    interest in deleting groups recently.  If the course of action I
    decide is not accepted by the majority of administrators and
    readers of the net, I'm sure it will be undone.

Net.notes should remain around, but the name is far from ideal.
It should be named "net.news.notes".  
    This suggestion came from at least 5 people.  I agree.
    Does someone want to formally suggest it and tally votes, etc?

Net.theater is a new group -- it should be given more time.
    I only got 4 response from people who wanted the group kept, and
    two of those people admitted that they only used the group
    with a distribution of less than "net".  The group just doesn't
    seem to be living up to its intended purpose.  If there is
    a very active "theater" group in some distribution area,
    it would be better to create a local group for their use.

I got mail from officials of formal organizations related to each of
net.lang.apl, net.games.go, and net.decus asking me to keep them.  A
couple of people from the Decus organization promised that if they
didn't get more active they'd delete the group themseleves in 6
months.

At least 10 people wrote and urged me to trash all the mentioned groups,
and while I was at it take net.flame, net.general, net.abortion,
net.politics, net.origins, net.religion, and net.jokes (not all of
these were suggested by each).  I didn't count these responses
carefully, nor did I (or do I) solicit such mailings.  Someone
else can tally such urgings.

I got the following mail from reid@Glacier (Brian Reid), and I think
he made some interesting points.  I'd like to excerpt portions of
that mail here (with Brian's permission):

> The net serves three fundamentally orthogonal needs:
>   1) It is a communications vehicle by which people with certain
>      interests and needs can communicate information with one another.
>   2) It is a social vehicle by which people develop a sense of
>      electronic community.
>   3) It is a soapbox that satisfies a hunger for attention, a desire
>      to have one's words be published. A vanity press, if you will.
> 
> Need #1 is fulfilled by the hobbyist groups (net.rec.ski, net.bicycle,
> net.audio, etc.) and by the technical exchange groups (net.bugs,
> net.math.symbolic, net.lang.c, etc.)
> 
> Need #2 is fulfilled by the personality/social club groups (net.jokes,
> net.sport.football, net.singles, net.motss, etc.)
> 
> Need #3 is fulfilled by the soapbox groups (net.flame, net.politics,
> net.religion, etc.)
> 
> It is important that you realize that these are three fundamentally
> different kinds of netnews groups, populated by fundamentally different
> kinds of readers. 
> 
> Type-1 groups (information exchange) will have many more readers than
> writers. For example, there are a large number of readers of net.movies
> at Stanford, but almost none of them ever posts anything. Nearly every
> user on Glacier reads net.lang.mod2, but we rarely post anything.
> Someone who was measuring newsgroup worth by looking at writer count
> instead of reader count would get a very distorted view of the worth of
> these things.
> 
> Type-2 groups (club membership) seem to have the property that a huge
> fraction of the people who read them also post to them; that's part of
> the fun. Practically everybody who reads net.singles posts to it sooner
> or later, though some people subscribe for a while, read it for a
> while, then unsubscribe without ever posting anything. Some groups kind
> of hover at the boundary between information exchange and club
> membership; net.bicycle is a good example of this.
> 
> Type-3 groups (vanity press) have the unusual property that, at least
> around here, they have more writers than readers. I know plenty of
> people who have posted to net.flame but who do not subscribe to it.
> In the limiting case, these vanity-press groups divide themselves up
> into time-division-multiplexed subgroups. The people in net.flame who
> are talking about women's use of toilet paper do not read the messages
> about what we should do with terrorists, and the people who read the
> messages about terrorists do not read the messages about toilet paper.
> 
> The net was founded for the purpose of supporting type-1 groups, and
> then we discovered that type-2 was fun, too. However, type-3 groups
> fill a deeply-felt need in certain people, and the temptation was too
> great to resist. As either Mark or Chuq pointed out, the type-3 groups
> were founded to keep type-3 material out of type-1 and type-2 groups,
> by asking that the people who want to stand on the soapbox provide an
> audience for the others who want to stand on it too.

Perhaps it is time we discussed setting up 3 sets of rules for
creation and deletion of newsgroups?


My thanks to everyone who responded by mail or in postings.
-- 
Gene "4 months and counting" Spafford
The Clouds Project, School of ICS, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
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