Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site onfcanim.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watcgl!onfcanim!dave From: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group Subject: Re: Fear and Loathing on the Clouds Message-ID: <14720@onfcanim.UUCP> Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 12:51:49 EDT Article-I.D.: onfcanim.14720 Posted: Fri Oct 25 12:51:49 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 06:20:34 EDT References: <614@h-sc1.UUCP> <1817@hao.UUCP> Reply-To: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) Distribution: net Organization: ONF, Montreal Lines: 65 Xref: watmath net.news:4152 net.news.group:3992 To me, something seems slightly odd about the "sufficient traffic in other groups" criterion for creation of a new newsgroup. An example is "net.digital". Every once in a while someone proposes starting this group, and it usually ends up vetoed because of the argument that there is little if any current traffic that should go in such a group. Yet, does anyone dispute that there would be some traffic if the group existed? Not a large amount, and not likely the "ongoing discussion" that seems necessary to generate enough traffic to start up a group. But the group *would* be useful if created - how else to get in touch with other people with skills and interests in that area? (Surely you don't seriously suggest that people read net.misc looking for technical articles?) I'm sure there are even better examples of groups that could have a useful role in USENET, even if their traffic averaged over time was quite small. I remember when I started reading USENET (1981) that creation of a new group required little more than a group of people who were interested in discussing a particular subject. I *liked* that. Of course, few people were worried about bandwidth then. If I recall correctly, when the "rules" about requiring a concensus, and existing traffic, were first introduced, it was due to concern about software that could handle no more than a certain arbitrary number of total newsgroups, not for reasons of discouraging traffic. Now, the reasoning given for enforcing the current creation rules is one of limiting backbone traffic. But is this a group that the backbone sites would mind carrying? Its content would likely be largely technical; it would likely be of assistance to a number of people on the net in carrying out their jobs. Contrast this with net.flame, or net.abortion, or net.origins, which were created because of overwhelming discussion volumes in other groups, yet I cannot imagine anyone arguing that they are "useful" in the same sense as a net.digital (or net.internat) would be. What I would like to see is pruning of current high-volume low-content groups as utzoo has recently done, in order to retain enough bandwidth so that the creation of "useful" groups can be *encouraged*, rather than discouraged. Of course this requires people to make subjective judgements of what is "useful", and thus open themselves to charges of unfairness. Thus a scheme based on entirely objective measures such as "sufficient traffic" is appealing for its apparent fairness. But I will happily trade the freedom to post an argument to net.flame or net.abortion for the freedom to *create new groups* on potentially-interesting topics. And on a net whose content seems to be restricted by backbone bandwidth, it seems that you can't have both "freedoms" at once. Now, the people ultimately responsible for restricting bandwidth are the site administrators. I'm very interested in their comments on this. Do you think that enforced stagnation of newsgroups (restricting new groups) is a good solution to increasing traffic? Any other comments? I don't wish to propose how to alter the current "rules" on newsgroup creation and forwarding. I just want to engender some discussion of where we want USENET to head in the future. Dave Martindale P.S. I have been a news administrator on various machines for the past four years, and have both a personal and "professional" interest in what happens to USENET.