Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ritcv.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!rochester!ritcv!mjl From: mjl@ritcv.UUCP (Mike Lutz) Newsgroups: net.news.group Subject: Re: Against the fall of net.internat Message-ID: <8973@ritcv.UUCP> Date: Sat, 26-Oct-85 13:12:16 EST Article-I.D.: ritcv.8973 Posted: Sat Oct 26 13:12:16 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 29-Oct-85 01:17:38 EST References: <1149@sdcsvax.UUCP> <1818@hao.UUCP> Reply-To: mjl@ritcv.UUCP (Michael Lutz) Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY Lines: 46 In article <1818@hao.UUCP> woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) writes: > >... Worthiness of the topic >is not mentioned ANYWHERE; the sole criteria for justifying a group is >DEMONSTRATED NEED based on volume of postings in related groups. Not to pick on Greg, because this sentiment seems to be that of Spaf and some other admins, but this rule can be used to show that net.bizarre should be a newsgroup and net.internat should not. I'm certain all the 'bizarrenix' can rapidly deluge other groups and vote thousands of times in net.news for their pet group. Since worthiness is not a criterion, they should be allowed to recreate net.bizarre because they've demonstrated a need and we all know they can generate the volume. It's 99 and 44/100% trash, though, and I don't want to have to carry it. Net.internat, on the other hand, has a much smaller community of writers and readers. I know, I know, there was a lot of repitition in the first few postings, but at least some *worthy* issues were addressed, and the signal to noise ratio is *much* higher than net.bizarre. I don't see how these folks could ever justify a newsgroup based on volume, but they obviously have a unifying theme, and I think the worthiness and general high content justify the group. By the way, newsgroup creation wasn't always so rigidly constrained. I know; I was in on the creation of both net.bicycle and net.garden, two newsgroups that will never hit the top 25 (thank God) but which are nicely meeting the needs of well-defined and widely dispersed groups of users. Were I to propose rules, I'd want to see more emphasis put on the theme of the group (so you could tell what it's about), with some reasonable show of netwide interest. This, of course, does not address the *real* problem of the volume of trash, with bad articles driving out good in variant of Gresham's Law. But then the current rules do not adequately address this problem either. In fact, I believe that "trash compaction" is the real reason behind the removal of net.bizarre (a move I support), but it had to be justified in terms of our rules, and net.internat was an innocent victim of the purge. So let's concentrate on mechanisms to eliminate trash and less on developing newsgroup creation rules with constraints that would test the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job. -- Mike Lutz Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY UUCP: {allegra,seismo}!rochester!ritcv!mjl CSNET: mjl%rit@csnet-relay.ARPA