Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!woods
From: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Old Group Deletion Procedures
Keywords: delete obsolete newsgroups
Message-ID: <4492@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 26 Sep 89 22:45:58 GMT
References: <3137@ur-cc.UUCP> <1989Sep26.212755.8458@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov>
Reply-To: woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods)
Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 25

In article <1989Sep26.212755.8458@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov> david@jane.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (David Robinson) writes:
>Why bother deleting inactive groups?  They are only taking up one inode
>on your disk and one line in your active file.


(This is a form letter. This question has been asked and answered so many
 times that it has probably set a USENET record by now, and ought
 to be included in the news.announce.newusers postings)

  The problem with creating extraneous newsgroups is not a network resource
issue, it is a HUMAN resource issue. The more newsgroups there are, the
harder it is to find the right group to post in. Secondly, naming issues
are VERY important. It seems clear that we can handle a lot more newsgroups
if we ensure that they are placed properly within the hierarchy and have
well-chosen names. If you look at some of the recent debates over
sci.skeptic and soc.rights.human (and even sci.econ vs sci.economics), you can
see that this is NOT a trivial issue!
  If you don't believe that too many newsgroups is a problem, you can either
look at the number of articles ALREADY posted to the wrong group because
the poster couldn't find the right group, or you can consider the extreme case
where every article is it's own newsgroup. Since this is exactly like having
no newsgroups at all, it does prove that a line must be drawn SOMEWHERE,
or at least that there COULD be such a thing as too many newsgroups.

--Greg