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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ukma!david
From: david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: What newsgroups are *really* needed?
Message-ID: <2262@ukma.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-Oct-85 16:40:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: ukma.2262
Posted: Wed Oct  2 16:40:22 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Oct-85 07:04:07 EDT
References: <2242@ukma.UUCP> <3656@garfield.UUCP> <966@druky.UUCP>
Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences, Lexington KY
Lines: 60

If you'll remember, I posted (in <2422@ukma.UUCP>) a list of newsgroups
that we were thinking of cutting out and asked for comments.  Haven't
gotten a lot, but thought these two were interesting and representative.

First is someone apparently wanting us to keep all newsgroups.

In article <996@druky.UUCP>, krahl@druky.UUCP (R.H. Krahl) writes:
> Organization: AT&T-ISL - Denver, Colorado

> Boy David!  This sounds *real* grim.  Do I have this right?...To lower the
> phone bill, you want to do away with groups that either have low volume or
> (in your opinion) low quality????

> If a lot of people feel the way you do...
> I guess the DEATH of the net is near...I hope they don't and it's not.

> -- 
> 				       Rich Krahl  ..!drutx!druky!krahl
> 				          @ AT&T - The Right Choice. 

Then a sympathizer.


In article <3656@garfield.UUCP>, jeff1@garfield.UUCP (Jeff Sparkes) writes:
> Organization: Memorial U. of Nfld. C.S. Dept., St. John's

> In article <2242@ukma.UUCP> david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) writes:
> >Because of high phone bills and angry glares from our higher-up's,
> >we've been having to decide which newsgroups can be thrown away and
> >which should be kept.  

> 	We just went through the same problem, but since we are a computer
> science department, we decided to keep only computer related groups.
> The only large groups that we still get are net.sources and net.unix-wizards.
> We managed to cut out about 75% of our news, the administration is happy,
> and we realized how much of the news is crap.  All the talk about information
> overload and the net collapsing under it's own weight is apparently true.

> Jeff Sparkes
> garfield!jeff1

The first thing I noticed was where these two people are *from*!  The one
is an AT&T employee and probably doesn't have to worry about his phone
bills (:-).  The second is from a University and is expressing the exact
opinions which have been expressed around here.  i.e.  Given a limited 
amount of support for receiving news and a seemingly unlimited supply
of news, why is *EVERYTHING* necessary???

Yes, Mr. Krahl, I do want to lower the phone bill by cutting newsgroups.
And, no, I won't kill the net by doing so because I'm not asking the
net to kill newsgroups, I'm simply intending to cut them locally.  On
the other hand, if the net were to see this suggestion and agree that
all those newsgroups were worthless and needed to be cut I wouldn't cry.

What's a poor university to *do*?!?!?
-- 
David Herron, ukma!david@ANL-MCS.ARPA, cbosgd!ukma!david
(Soon -- david@UKMA.BITNET, and (hopefully) david@ukma.csnet)

Hackin's in me blood!  My mother was known as Miss Hacker before she married!