Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: DISCUSSION - modification of charter for news.announce.newgroups
Message-ID: <14563@bfmny0.UUCP>
Date: 19 Aug 89 03:39:20 GMT
References: <3960@ncar.ucar.edu>  <1989Aug13.021012.216@utzoo.uucp> <3994@looking.on.ca> <1047@anise.acc.com> <4001@looking.on.ca> <1989Aug18.030110.3223@nc386.uucp>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Organization: ^
Lines: 36

What's wrong with Brandon's concept is that news.* outranks every other
hierarchy; thus it is the one place everyone can and should look for
information about the most basic things happening to news.  New groups,
even outside the "mainstream," are the most important single event in
the life of Usenet.

Cross pollination is inherently a good thing.  If you never got talk.*
because you heard it was all BS, but then talk.religion.deist was formed
and you didn't even know there were any other Deists left on the planet,
you ought to have a chance to hear about it.

The tests for admittance should be: Is the new group of potential
interest to people who don't already get the hierarchy or pay attention
to it?  And is the hierarchy in question available for broad
distribution?  "Broad" might be kind of subjective -- biz.* ok, ba.*
well hmmm, tor.*  -- but even within regional distributions it
may still make sense to crosspost to n.a.n. WITH Distribution: SET
APPROPRIATELY.  Now would this prove too difficult to police, I dunno.

I also think intermediate stuff should be kept out of n.a.n. entirely.
Just this: for the mainstream -- one call for discussion (with followups
directed to news.announce.newgroups.d, unmoderated), one call for votes,
one announcement of success or failure.  For the non-mainstream -- only
announcements of success, subject to the tests mentioned above.  If you
don't even get or read biz.* now, you may be entitled to learn when
something important happens there, but your vote is arguably worthless
and you don't need to be able to argue about it beforehand.

I would be much more concerned about the nuisance to the net of debates
on creating mainstream groups than I would about the actual volume of
one-time newgroup announcements, net wide, even counting minor
distributions and hierarchies.  The .d group should be created, and the
charter here amended to welcome most everyone's birth announcements.
-- 
"We walked on the moon --	((	Tom Neff
	you be polite"		 )) 	tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET