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From: geoff@pmafire.UUCP (Geoff Allen)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Re: A new great renaming? (spring cleaning?)
Message-ID: <784@pmafire.UUCP>
Date: 27 Sep 89 16:51:12 GMT
References: <35044@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: geoff@pmafire.UUCP (Geoff Allen)
Organization: WINCO Computer Engineering, INEL, Idaho
Lines: 45

In article <35044@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>[Chuq suggests that we consider a New Great Renaming.]
>The way I think it could work is this: someone in charge takes feedback on
>what people think are problems in the name space -- misnamed groups,
>misplaced groups, etc. They filter it all out and decide which things really
>ought to be dealt with and then put up a consensus proposal, which is then
>discussed and refined until everyone generally agrees it's a good thing.
>Then we do it.

I think this is a great idea.  Besides, all the discussion, flames and
all that would arise from all this would help us all to do really well
on the next 'Bandwidth Wasters Hall of Fame' list! :-)

[Some suggested ideas, which I generally like.]

>This would the the time to consider new top-level
>domains for future expansion, moving things from one domain to another,
>deleting domains (hah!), deleting groups and generally optimizing the name
>space and taking a longer-term look at the future of USENET.  Rather than
>arguing each nit-picking detail ad infinitum, we could put it all together,
>fix it up and then get it done all at once, reducing the lead time *and* the
>amount of noise and nastiness that goes on with all of this. 

Well, I doubt that a Great Renaming would reduce `noise and nastiness'! 
I imagine it would bring out the flame-throwers in droves.  (I wasn't
around for the last renaming, so I don't know how smoothly it was pulled
off.)

>And no, I don't propose putting it to a general vote,

I agree that a vote would probably be the ultimate Excedrin headache. 
But do you really think we heve any chance at a consensus by discussion?
A consensus seems to have been reached about rec.radio.* for the radio
monitoring group, but is this the exception?

>Anyway, this is really a meta-proposal for meta-discussion rather than
>anything formal. It just seems like a reasonable idea to me -- which means
>there has to be a nasty flaw in it somewhere.

Seems reasonable to me, too.  A colossal pain, but reasonable.

-- 
Geoff Allen                  \  Disclaimer: Any thoughts here are my own,
{uunet,bigtex}!pmafire!geoff  \  not WINCO's, DOE's or anyone else's.
ucdavis!egg-id!pmafire!geoff   \