Re: The Great Downsizing of comp.os.*
technomaNge
> There is a proposal currently in news.announce.newgroups to remove 198
> unmoderated newsgroups all across the BIG8. Because of the magnitude
>
> If you have any objections, please make them heard in moderated group
> news.groups.proposals. The "Followup-To:" header is set on this message,
> so simply replying to this post should do the right thing.
>
The usefulness of these groups is apparently low enough that these
groups ready to kill. Shut them down, rescind their charter.
Now that Usenet is dying, no-one will miss them.
technomaNge
--
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
<bi...@microsoft.com> writes:
> The usefulness of these groups is apparently low enough that these
> groups ready to kill. Shut them down, rescind their charter.
> Now that Usenet is dying, no-one will miss them.
Why should groups be removed if they are low-traffic? These days,
essentially no resources are consumed by dormant groups. Some of the
ones on the list I read and occasionally there is something there.
At least for now, I vote not to remove any.
Alexander Bartolich
> [...] Some of the ones on the list I read and occasionally there
> is something there.
Can you please give a concrete example for "something there"?
--
host -t mx moderators.isc.org
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply
<alexander...@gmx.at> writes:
> Phillip Helbig wrote:
> > [...] Some of the ones on the list I read and occasionally there
> > is something there.
>
> Can you please give a concrete example for "something there"?
I was thinking of comp.org.decus. Maybe my mind is playing tricks on
me, but my impression was that, while low-traffic, there were occasional
(real) posts there in the last few months.
Thor Kottelin
wrote in message news:iios8f$53a$1...@online.de...
> Why should groups be removed if they are low-traffic?
Because a clutter of unused or very lightly used groups [1] can make it
more difficult for users to find those groups that are active.
--
Thor Kottelin
http://www.anta.net/
[1] From the article great-downsizi...@news.albasani.net:
"All groups [to which the request for discussion applies] fulfill these
conditions:
(--)
- zero on-topic, non-crossposted threads in the past 18 months
- on-topic questions that received no on-topic answer do not count"
Alexander Bartolich
>> [...]
>> Can you please give a concrete example for "something there"?
>
> I was thinking of comp.org.decus. Maybe my mind is playing tricks on
> me, but my impression was that, while low-traffic, there were occasional
> (real) posts there in the last few months.
I see.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.org.decus/about
Any other concrete objections?
D Finnigan
> In article <iinro0$7ok$1...@news.eternal-september.org>, technomaNge
> <bi...@microsoft.com> writes:
>
>> The usefulness of these groups is apparently low enough that these
>> groups ready to kill. Shut them down, rescind their charter.
>> Now that Usenet is dying, no-one will miss them.
>
> Why should groups be removed if they are low-traffic? These days,
> essentially no resources are consumed by dormant groups.
Then by that same argument, conversely, we should be able to create any
number of newsgroups on any subject without any indication that there is
now, or shall be, traffic.
In other words, we've got the alt hierarchy for that.
Steve Bonine
Since DECUS ceased to exist many years ago, unless people are using it
to reminisce about the good 'ole days, I wouldn't expect any on-topic
articles. An examination of the group indeed shows that to be the case;
the only thing that caught my eye was a piece of spam that had been
customized to include the group name in the subject.
Like DECUS, the newsgroup is dead.
Rui Maciel
> Then by that same argument, conversely, we should be able to create any
> number of newsgroups on any subject without any indication that there is
> now, or shall be, traffic.
The process to create a non-alt newsgroup appears to be painfully
bureaucratic, and some alt newsgroups enjoy more traffic than non-alt
ones. If some people are so keen in eliminating dead newsgroups then it
would also be a good idea to facilitate the creation of new ones,
independent of how much traffic they generate.
Rui Maciel
Alexander Bartolich
> D Finnigan wrote:
>
>> Then by that same argument, conversely, we should be able to create any
>> number of newsgroups on any subject without any indication that there is
>> now, or shall be, traffic.
>
> The process to create a non-alt newsgroup appears to be painfully
> bureaucratic,
All right. Let's test this. What group do you want to see created?
> and some alt newsgroups enjoy more traffic than non-alt ones.
> If some people are so keen in eliminating dead newsgroups then it
> would also be a good idea to facilitate the creation of new ones,
> independent of how much traffic they generate.
The problem with "create only" hierarchies like alt.* und free.* is
that they grow beyond all bounds. It is indeed no problem to have a
10^3 empty groups, or even 10^4. But with the commodity hardware
used by hobbyists, 10^5 groups are pushing the limits, and 10^6 are
outright insane. I know this first hand, because I run such a hobbyist
newsserver since April 2005, and for some time my policy was to create
any alt.* group referenced in a Newsgroups: header.
tl;dr: The process to create an alt newsgroup on well run servers is
immense. You have to ask each admin separately to do it.
John Santos
DECUS as an organization no longer exists, since it was absorbed by
the Compaq and then the HP user groups, but there are many members of
these follow on groups who have no particular interest in the vast
majority of HP and Compaq products (mostly generic PCs) but are very
interested in the original DEC product lines, both historically and
those that are still extant, such as VMS. There are local user groups
in many places still specifically oriented to those products, which
more strongly identify with DECUS than any of the follow on groups.
I also object to the removal of comp.os.decus.
--
John
Doug Freyburger
>
> Then by that same argument, conversely, we should be able to create any
> number of newsgroups on any subject without any indication that there is
> now, or shall be, traffic.
In recent years the RFP process has resulted in the creation of a few
groups without justification of traffic predictions. If someone wants
to create a group for years it has been a matter of doing some
cut-n-paste from the latest template and going through several phases of
"are you sure you want this group" "yes" followed by a phase of looking
for potential posters to ask NSPs to add the group.
> In other words, we've got the alt hierarchy for that.
To a great extent if you want to create a reasonable group there less
difference than there used to be. The diligence required of a proponent
is small in either if the proponant choses to make it so. Do not
confuse the fact that many proponants in recent years have chosen to
join threads in news.groups and have been active in their efforts with
what is required for the group to be created.
So that sort of turn-about is already in place. It is easy to creat
groups. As a set of managed hierarchies there is management in place in
both directrions.
Mark Kramer
technomaNge <pir...@microsoft.com> wrote:
>The usefulness of these groups is apparently low enough that these
>groups ready to kill. Shut them down, rescind their charter.
>Now that Usenet is dying, no-one will miss them.
I find this argument fatalistic in the extreme. Usenet is dying, why
not kill it faster?
Doug Freyburger
>
>> Can you please give a concrete example for "something there"?
>
> I was thinking of comp.org.decus. Maybe my mind is playing tricks on
> me, but my impression was that, while low-traffic, there were occasional
> (real) posts there in the last few months.
I checked comp.org.decus in the Google archive. The most recent on
topic question was Feb 2009. It was answered. That's closer to alive
than many groups in the list but it's dead for two consequative years at
this point.
Brad Templeton
Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>"Phillip Helbig---undress to reply" <hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de>
>wrote in message news:iios8f$53a$1...@online.de...
>
>> Why should groups be removed if they are low-traffic?
>
>Because a clutter of unused or very lightly used groups [1] can make it
>more difficult for users to find those groups that are active.
So why doesn't some eager volunteer maintain a list of groups that
are active, and make it easy for users to find them?
This seems vastly easier than having long arguments and votes
over what should go in a master list.
--
What's the future of TV and advertising after Tivo?
http://www.templetons.com/brad/tvfuture.html
Alexander Bartolich
> [...]
> DECUS as an organization no longer exists, since it was absorbed by
> the Compaq and then the HP user groups, but there are many members of
> these follow on groups who have no particular interest in the vast
> majority of HP and Compaq products (mostly generic PCs) but are very
> interested in the original DEC product lines, both historically and
> those that are still extant, such as VMS. There are local user groups
> in many places still specifically oriented to those products, which
> more strongly identify with DECUS than any of the follow on groups.
>
> I also object to the removal of comp.os.decus.
Usenet is not a temple, not a shrine, not an archive, not a memorial,
not an archive, not a library, not a symbol of protest against every-
thing that's wrong in the world.
For some reason the surviving members of DECUS have not been using the
newsgroup in the last years. Do you have reason to believe that this is
to change?
Rui Maciel
>> The process to create a non-alt newsgroup appears to be painfully
>> bureaucratic,
>
> All right. Let's test this. What group do you want to see created?
I suspect that creating a new group, particularly one which currently
doesn't exist in the alt hierarchy, is a losing battle. It's possible
that a "build it and they will come" attitude would be enough to ensure
it's success but, as it appears that everyone is going away, I don't see
how that there will be anyone in here to come in. Therefore, maybe at
this time this effort is a bit futile.
However, we must wonder if all these bureaucratic barriers didn't
contributed to this exodus. After all, the need to communicate with
others through a public medium didn't disappeared; only the medium which
is used to facilitate this means of communication changed, from Usenet to
web forums. Once it became easier to develop and/or install and run a web
server running some DHTML application that tried to implement what was
done through newsgroups than simply creating a new newsgroup... We have
to wonder what went wrong.
Nonetheless, it would be nice to have a newsgroup dedicated to GPGPU
programming. Adding to this, there are a hand full of newsgroups
dedicated to Linux distros in the alt directory which should have a place
in comp.os.Linux.*, particularly those dedicated to the major
distributions. Similarly, those dedicated to programming languages,
particularly popular ones such as Lua and Perl, should also be featured in
comp.lang.*.
>> and some alt newsgroups enjoy more traffic than non-alt ones.
>> If some people are so keen in eliminating dead newsgroups then it
>> would also be a good idea to facilitate the creation of new ones,
>> independent of how much traffic they generate.
>
> The problem with "create only" hierarchies like alt.* und free.* is
> that they grow beyond all bounds. It is indeed no problem to have a
> 10^3 empty groups, or even 10^4. But with the commodity hardware
> used by hobbyists, 10^5 groups are pushing the limits, and 10^6 are
> outright insane. I know this first hand, because I run such a hobbyist
> newsserver since April 2005, and for some time my policy was to create
> any alt.* group referenced in a Newsgroups: header.
Unfortunately I don't believe that we will see such a growth in Usenet.
It has already been shown that Usenet traffic started to contract, even
when measuring traffic by the sheer volume of data being transferred
(i.e., spam and all the stuff being posted to binary newsgroups) instead
of the number of meaningful posts. Therefore, this concern regarding the
growth "beyond all bounds" is, as much as it pains me to say, unfounded
and very unlikely.
Nonetheless, facilitating the creation of new groups doesn't necessarily
mean dropping all rules. From reading the FAQ on the bureaucratic process
to create a newsgroup I was left with the idea that it was a Kafkian
experience, carbon-copied from The Process, which ended up with the
decision over the fates of a new group being left ultimately to some
faceless bureaucrat somewhere. And this does nothing to foster the
evolution of this means of communication and everything to stagnate it.
Which brings us exactly where we are now.
Rui Maciel
Alexander Bartolich
> [...]
> However, we must wonder if all these bureaucratic barriers didn't
> contributed to this exodus.
I am not sure whether you know how the BIG8 are managed today.
> [...]
> Nonetheless, it would be nice to have a newsgroup dedicated to GPGPU
> programming. Adding to this, there are a hand full of newsgroups
> dedicated to Linux distros in the alt directory which should have a place
> in comp.os.Linux.*, particularly those dedicated to the major
> distributions. Similarly, those dedicated to programming languages,
> particularly popular ones such as Lua and Perl, should also be featured in
> comp.lang.*.
A good informal proposal looks like this: "Hey dude, me and my buddies
want to talk about 'foo' in a new group called 'bar'."
Do *you* want to talk about GPGPU programming, a hand full of Linux
distros, and programming languages like Lua and Perl, in the BIG8?
Do you know some people who would like to join you?
>> [...]
>> The problem with "create only" hierarchies like alt.* und free.* is
>> that they grow beyond all bounds. It is indeed no problem to have a
>> 10^3 empty groups, or even 10^4. But with the commodity hardware
>> used by hobbyists, 10^5 groups are pushing the limits, and 10^6 are
>> outright insane. I know this first hand, because I run such a hobbyist
>> newsserver since April 2005, and for some time my policy was to create
>> any alt.* group referenced in a Newsgroups: header.
>
> Unfortunately I don't believe that we will see such a growth in Usenet.
I have personally experienced that an everything-goes policy will fill
up the group list with well above 10^5 entries in no time. This might
not be a problem for the huge binary servers, but then they care about
nothing.
> Nonetheless, facilitating the creation of new groups doesn't necessarily
> mean dropping all rules. From reading the FAQ on the bureaucratic process
> to create a newsgroup
Could you please drop the URL or a Message-ID of this FAQ?
Alexander Bartolich
> [...]
> So why doesn't some eager volunteer maintain a list of groups that
> are active, and make it easy for users to find them?
Everybody is waiting for you to do it.
> This seems vastly easier than having long arguments and votes
> over what should go in a master list.
I am not sure whether you know how the BIG8 is managed nowadays.
Rob Kelk
<john....@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
<snip>
>DECUS as an organization no longer exists, since it was absorbed by
>the Compaq and then the HP user groups, but there are many members of
>these follow on groups who have no particular interest in the vast
>majority of HP and Compaq products (mostly generic PCs) but are very
>interested in the original DEC product lines, both historically and
>those that are still extant, such as VMS.
The comp.os.vms newsgroup is alive and well, with over a hundred
on-topic posts in the last week alone. This indicates that there is a
continuing need for comp.os.vms - it says nothing about comp.org.decus
> There are local user groups
>in many places still specifically oriented to those products, which
>more strongly identify with DECUS than any of the follow on groups.
If people who want to post messages about DECUS still exist, why aren't
they doing so?
>I also object to the removal of comp.os.decus.
Why? It's run its course, just like a program that has reached its
termination condition but did not terminate. It's time for the sysop to
manually intervene.
--
Rob Kelk Personal address (ROT-13): eboxryx -ng- tznvy -qbg- pbz
Any opinions here are mine, not ONAG's.
ott.* newsgroup charters: <http://onag.pinetree.org>
Any Usenet message claiming to be from me but posted from any server
other than individual.net is a forgery. Please filter out such
messages if you have the capability.
David Bostwick
>John Santos wrote:
>> [...]
>> DECUS as an organization no longer exists, since it was absorbed by
>> the Compaq and then the HP user groups, but there are many members of
>> these follow on groups who have no particular interest in the vast
>> majority of HP and Compaq products (mostly generic PCs) but are very
>> interested in the original DEC product lines, both historically and
>> those that are still extant, such as VMS. There are local user groups
>> in many places still specifically oriented to those products, which
>> more strongly identify with DECUS than any of the follow on groups.
>>
>> I also object to the removal of comp.os.decus.
>
>Usenet is not a temple, not a shrine, not an archive, not a memorial,
>not an archive, not a library, not a symbol of protest against every-
>thing that's wrong in the world.
>
Nor is it a place that must be kept pristine, clean of anything the board
deems detrimental to other groups. Given enough time, the Big 8 will contain
exactly 8 groups.
You ask for opinions from others about keeping groups, and then you dismiss
those opinions with non sequiturs. Do you wonder why others have the opinion
that the board has never given a rat's whisker about anyone else? I didn't
have that opinion when the keys were transferred, but it's getting harder to
argue against it.
>For some reason the surviving members of DECUS have not been using the
>newsgroup in the last years. Do you have reason to believe that this is
>to change?
>
I know this has been said 100 times before, but do you really have reason to
believe that culling will improve existing groups? This isn't a garden.
Rob Kelk
wrote:
Usenet has been "dying" for decades now. What could possibly speed that
process?
Rob Kelk
wrote:
>In article <iip0uq$tk1$1...@news.albasani.net>,
>Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>>"Phillip Helbig---undress to reply" <hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de>
>>wrote in message news:iios8f$53a$1...@online.de...
>>
>>> Why should groups be removed if they are low-traffic?
>>
>>Because a clutter of unused or very lightly used groups [1] can make it
>>more difficult for users to find those groups that are active.
>
>
>So why doesn't some eager volunteer maintain a list of groups that
>are active, and make it easy for users to find them?
That's what's happening - "some eager volunteer[s]" are making sure the
checkgroups list is "a list of groups that are active".
>This seems vastly easier than having long arguments and votes
>over what should go in a master list.
One might notice that the people who actually get to vote - the Big-8
Management Board - are not participating in these "long arguments".
Alexander Bartolich
> [...]
> You ask for opinions from others about keeping groups, and then you dismiss
> those opinions with non sequiturs. Do you wonder why others have the opinion
> that the board has never given a rat's whisker about anyone else? I didn't
> have that opinion when the keys were transferred, but it's getting harder to
> argue against it.
Do you want to use comp.os.decus?
Do you know somebody else who wants to?
Anyway, you might be relieved to know that I really like the facial
features of rodents, though a penchant for feline company has pre-
vented further study.
Thor Kottelin
news:jLOdnWiNatEXy83Q...@posted.rawbandwidth...
> In article <iip0uq$tk1$1...@news.albasani.net>,
> Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>>"Phillip Helbig---undress to reply" <hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de>
>>wrote in message news:iios8f$53a$1...@online.de...
>>
>>> Why should groups be removed if they are low-traffic?
>>
>>Because a clutter of unused or very lightly used groups [1] can make it
>>more difficult for users to find those groups that are active.
> So why doesn't some eager volunteer maintain a list of groups that
> are active, and make it easy for users to find them?
For maintained hierarchies, the active file should be such a list. Keeping
dead groups and instead having (somewhere on the Web?) a separate list of
non-dead groups does not make sense to me, but perhaps I misunderstood
you.
Mark Kramer
Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>"Brad Templeton" <b...@templetons.com> wrote in message
>news:jLOdnWiNatEXy83Q...@posted.rawbandwidth...
>> are active, and make it easy for users to find them?
Because it is already easy for users to find them.
>For maintained hierarchies, the active file should be such a list.
Despite its name, the active file is a list of EXISTING groups, not
a list of groups with activity within the last undefined number of days.
>Keeping
>dead groups and instead having (somewhere on the Web?) a separate list of
>non-dead groups does not make sense to me,
Me either. Note that this does not mean that the list of existing groups
need to be cut, just that it is silly to have a web-page with a list
of what groups have what activity. The news server knows this and tells the
newsreader.
Kathy Morgan
> I know this has been said 100 times before, but do you really have reason to
> believe that culling will improve existing groups? This isn't a garden.
I have no direct evidence that it will improve them, but I believe that
it will. An often repeated mantra in the past has been that splitting
an active newsgroup can harm the discussion by fracturing it into too
many small discussions, splitting discussion in an unnatural fashion,
and/or encouraging Netkopping. ("You can't discuss that here, that
discussion has been moved to foo.bar.") I've no hard evidence that that
is true, but it certainly seems reasonable to me. The same logic
dictates that if the total amount of discussion has declined below some
critical point, the discussion would be improved by allowing some of the
discussion to move into another group.
I also think it's harmful when someone finds a group where his subject
should be discussed, but there is no one there to discuss it. This
tends to discourage many from discussing it anywhere on Usenet; they
don't want to post off-topic in an apparently wrong group, or they're
new to Usenet and put off by their first few tries when they post to
dead groups and are apparently ignored.
I do have one small example where I think too many newsgroups splintered
discussion too much. When moderated comp.software.shareware.* was
created, the supporters insisted on three groups: css.announce,
css.authors, and css.users. Announcements and ads were to be posted
only to css.announce, keeping them out of the two discussion groups.
css.authors was for shareware authors to discuss common interests and
give one another assistance. css.users was for shareware users to
provide assistance to one another, post reviews of shareware, etc.
Well, it turned out that users did not want to talk to one another or
get assistance from other shareware users; they wanted to talk directly
to the authors in css.authors. Their support questions to css.authors
were rejected and they wouldn't post to css.users, so they just went
away entirely. In retrospect, I think css.authors would have stayed
healthier if it had welcomed users. css.users was removed due to lack
of submissions and the user posts would now be welcome in css.authors,
but it's too late--those users have never come back to css.*. In the
meantime, css.authors has declined to the point that it is also now in
critical condition and on life support.
--
Kathy, speaking just for myself
Brad Templeton
Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>"Brad Templeton" <b...@templetons.com> wrote in message
>news:jLOdnWiNatEXy83Q...@posted.rawbandwidth...
>> In article <iip0uq$tk1$1...@news.albasani.net>,
>> Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>>>"Phillip Helbig---undress to reply" <hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de>
>>>wrote in message news:iios8f$53a$1...@online.de...
>>>
>>>> Why should groups be removed if they are low-traffic?
>>>
>>>Because a clutter of unused or very lightly used groups [1] can make it
>>>more difficult for users to find those groups that are active.
>
>> So why doesn't some eager volunteer maintain a list of groups that
>> are active, and make it easy for users to find them?
>
>For maintained hierarchies, the active file should be such a list. Keeping
>dead groups and instead having (somewhere on the Web?) a separate list of
>non-dead groups does not make sense to me, but perhaps I misunderstood
>you.
You got the gist of it. Though to put it more broad terms, I
believe that the idea of a master "Highlander style" (there can be only one)
checkgroups file and canonical active file is the flawed one in
the modern connected world.
To me, it seems clear that a newsreader should, when a user wants to
browse lists of newsgroups or search for them, simply display a web
URL, as chosen by the newsreader author or changed by the user
(with a default possibly recommended by the NNTP server.) This is
a vastly more flexible design, which allows for a dynamic design
and nice UI with live access to lots of information. It has so
many advantages over doing it by having the newsreader download
a newsgroups file that I am amazed I would have to enumerate them.
The only disadvantage would be for somebody who wants to browse such
a list while disconnected from the network, and that's pretty minor.
Among the numerous advantages, though, is there does not have to be
a master list, a master board or a master policy. There's a value
in working together, and it would still happen, but it would not be
an artifact of the software design, but rather a result of user needs.
There already are some sites that do this, but it's never been
formalized and integrated with the NNTP capabilities to make it
blossom.
To do this I would:
a) Add a capaiblity to the NNTP capabilities list which defines a
recommended URL for newsgroup searching and selection. (It would
typically be used with a POST command providing hashes of the alrady
subscribed groups if you want to use that.)
b) For servers which do this, some minor extensions to the news:
URI specification to allow various commands to the newsreader.
Today, the spec is just news:groupname and I would modify it to
include news:/comand/groupname, which would allow commands such
as read, subscribe, unsubscribe etc. Otherwise the newserader can
guess, in that a link to an unsubscribed group would cause a subscription
etc. I would also toss in an auth token to avoid the need for confirmation.
--
Analysis blog for Battlestar Galactica Fans -- http://ideas.4brad.com/battlestar
Brad Templeton
Alexander Bartolich <alexander...@gmx.at> wrote:
>Brad Templeton wrote:
>> [...]
>> So why doesn't some eager volunteer maintain a list of groups that
>> are active, and make it easy for users to find them?
>
>Everybody is waiting for you to do it.
One would presume that those who feel there is a big need, and
posting about the big problem in people finding the right newsgroups
would be the ones to do it.
>
>> This seems vastly easier than having long arguments and votes
>> over what should go in a master list.
>
>I am not sure whether you know how the BIG8 is managed nowadays.
>
Oddly, I would have felt that this approach would have been
right long ago. It's got some similarities to the trial newsgroup
system I tried to develop in the late 80s, which avoided votes.
There was a board of sorts, but it didn't exist to make too many
decisions -- the idea was simply to try out a group, see if it got
readers and participation, and make it permanent if it did.
There was no provision for permanent groups going dark and being
removed at the time since that wasn't something that would happen
at the height of things.
However, I designed this in the pre-web world, and I think any
system of administration and proposed user experiences for USENET
that ignores the web is just plain silly. It is not 1985 any more.
I think what we're seeing here, which is a combination of:
a) People clinging to long dead groups and
b) People needing more statistics on real group usage and
c) People fervently in favour of removing groups when they can't
readily articulate the good it will cause, and
d) People fervently against removing groups when they can't readily
articulate the bad it will cause
strikes me as a sign of things not going as well as they could.
Over time I've come to believe there is no great virtue in having
a master list to fight over. That was why alt surpassed what should
correctly be called the small-8 a long time ago, not in binaries, but
in text groups and text postings. And alt has *no* system at all.
This doesn't mean that alt is the right answer, but it does suggest
the right answer is closer to alt than to anything else.
Mark Kramer
Kathy Morgan <kmo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>I have no direct evidence that it will improve them, but I believe that
>it will. An often repeated mantra in the past has been that splitting
>an active newsgroup can harm the discussion by fracturing it into too
>many small discussions, splitting discussion in an unnatural fashion,
>and/or encouraging Netkopping. ("You can't discuss that here, that
>discussion has been moved to foo.bar.") I've no hard evidence that that
>is true, but it certainly seems reasonable to me. The same logic
>dictates that if the total amount of discussion has declined below some
>critical point, the discussion would be improved by allowing some of the
>discussion to move into another group.
What discussion is there to move into another group? The groups are,
according to all proponents of this RFD, dead/empty.
>I also think it's harmful when someone finds a group where his subject
>should be discussed, but there is no one there to discuss it.
You have not measured this, only how many people posted there.
I'm sorry if that is being repetative, but so is this claim.
>This
>tends to discourage many from discussing it anywhere on Usenet; they
>don't want to post off-topic in an apparently wrong group, or they're
>new to Usenet and put off by their first few tries when they post to
>dead groups and are apparently ignored.
1. They can tell when the group is dead.
2. If they don't want to post to an off-topic ("wrong") group, then
how does removing the only group that is on-topic help them? Wouldn't
this be just as much, if not more, of a discouragment to them?
Steve Bonine
> Despite its name, the active file is a list of EXISTING groups, not
> a list of groups with activity within the last undefined number of days.
The thing we're talking about is not "the active file". It's the list
of newsgroups maintained by the big-8 board, and the board has the
responsibility of defining what it is.
You're right; today it is a list of newsgroups that at some point in
history passed through whatever procedure was in effect at the time and
became "official". The definition of "official" is "on the list".
As such, it's useless except as an historical document.
There are those who want to make it useful; in fact, there are those who
would like to see it become the very list of "viable newsgroups" that
has been suggested in this thread. The way to do that is to remove dead
newsgroups.
Richard Kettlewell
> Rui Maciel wrote:
>> [...]
>> Nonetheless, it would be nice to have a newsgroup dedicated to GPGPU
>> programming. Adding to this, there are a hand full of newsgroups
>> dedicated to Linux distros in the alt directory which should have a place
>> in comp.os.Linux.*, particularly those dedicated to the major
>> distributions. Similarly, those dedicated to programming languages,
>> particularly popular ones such as Lua and Perl, should also be featured in
>> comp.lang.*.
>
> A good informal proposal looks like this: "Hey dude, me and my buddies
> want to talk about 'foo' in a new group called 'bar'."
>
> Do *you* want to talk about GPGPU programming, a hand full of Linux
> distros, and programming languages like Lua and Perl, in the BIG8?
>
> Do you know some people who would like to join you?
I'd read (some...) distribution-specific Linux groups, myself, though
I'm not entirely convinced they'd contain conversations that don't
already exist in the dozen or so existing comp.os.linux.* groups.
There are comp.lang.perl.* groups already.
Thor Kottelin
news:iipu2j$2bp$1...@vulture.killfile.org...
> In article <iipt8d$9k9$1...@news.albasani.net>,
> Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>>"Brad Templeton" <b...@templetons.com> wrote in message
>>news:jLOdnWiNatEXy83Q...@posted.rawbandwidth...
>>> So why doesn't some eager volunteer maintain a list of groups that
>>> are active, and make it easy for users to find them?
>>For maintained hierarchies, the active file should be such a list.
>
> Despite its name, the active file is a list of EXISTING groups, not
> a list of groups with activity within the last undefined number of days.
Yes, absolutely. However, on a well-run server, the active file usually
matches the official checkgroups lists as far as maintained hierarchies
are concerned. Apologies for the bad play on words.
Thor Kottelin
>>This
>>tends to discourage many from discussing it anywhere on Usenet; they
>>don't want to post off-topic in an apparently wrong group, or they're
>>new to Usenet and put off by their first few tries when they post to
>>dead groups and are apparently ignored.
> If they don't want to post to an off-topic ("wrong") group, then
> how does removing the only group that is on-topic help them?
Can you give an example of such a group being subject to this RFD?
For example, if comp.org.decus were to be rmgrouped, comp.misc,
comp.org.user-groups.misc or comp.os.misc could be used instead. There
does not have to be a specific group for every conceivable topic; it is
better to have less specific groups with a greater quantity of on-topic
traffic.
Harald Maedl
.:|Alexander Bartolich|:. wrote:
> John Santos wrote:
>> [...]
>> DECUS as an organization no longer exists, since it was absorbed by
>> the Compaq and then the HP user groups, but there are many members...
>> ... There are local user groups
>> in many places still specifically oriented to those products, which
>> more strongly identify with DECUS than any of the follow on groups.
>> I also object to the removal of comp.os.decus.
> Usenet is not a temple, not a shrine, not an archive, not a memorial,
> not an archive, not a library, not a symbol of protest against every-
> thing that's wrong in the world.
Amen! Can we now worship you, oh, Alexander, who are Lord over us all?
Let us sing:
Zitat:
-
Some things in NET are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you're chewing on Net's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best...
And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...
-
Well, my black sheeps, but USENET is a church - a church with thousands
of denominations! And by definition a denomination cannot be right or
wrong - it's faith, strong faith. You can recite good and fine arguments
one by one, but the problem is, that neither the Board nor other
netizens (hehe, but me) have a master plan for all. Philosophies about
what Usenet was/is/will or should be, are too various.
Let us praise Saint Kathy now, THE Guardian of OnT (huuhuuu, I have to
make up now my answer with sinister ontopics):
Zitat:
-
If NET seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing.
And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...
-
Right, my babes in the wood, the different concepts and different views,
the different grade of knowledge about Usenet and its technique and its
history, the different socio-cultural backgrounds of the netizens make
things difficult. You are wondering why in politics it is so endless
laboriously to take a decision? Look at the Usenet and you will
understand.
Let us praise Michael Hauben:
Zitat:
-
For NET is quite absurd
And AOL's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow.
So always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath
-
Well, my little white lambs, the basic idea of Usenet (and later of the
Internet) was the concept of cooperation between all levels and the idea
of a "Netizen" (not a user).
This concept is working passable, but only on the technique-level.
Regarding social components this concept of cooperation is only working
after a fashion.
All the holy FAQs with the "Golden Compass" of Netiquette and educations
centers like n.a.n, to bring netizens into line, are miserably failed.
That's the truth! And the reason is, that the concept of cooperation
wasn't internalized by the mainstream of users. Neither "The Ten
Commandments of Computerethics" nor the netiquette-rules were able to
bring this concept of cooperation closer to the netizens.
In the Net people are their own little Gods and rules -- they are only
useful to break.
Let us praise J. C. R. Licklider:
-
Net-Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Net-life's a laugh and Net-death's a joke, it's true.
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
-
THE MASTER PLAN
===============
1 We have to reinvent the Usenet or it will die much faster than we can
voice "The Imminent death of Usenet". We have to do it without any
reservations and without any happy memories regarding Usenet-quirks and
Usenet-conventions.
2 We have to bring the concept of cooperation closer to the Usenet-
_and_ the Internetcommunity. Cooperation is the only bracket which could
keep the Usenet and so the netizens together
3 We, the old bags, are in duty to fledge finally, to grow finally into
the status of "Netizens".
About the way we have to discuss. All discussions about removing or not
removing newsgroups are going to a never-ending story, before we haven't
done this. Amen!
Let us praise Vannevar Bush:
Zitat:
-
And always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the right side of life...
(Come on guys, cheer up!)
Always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the bright side of life...
(Worse things happen at sea, you know.)
Always look on the bright side of life...
(I mean - what have you got to lose?)
(You know, you come from nothing - you're going back to nothing.
What have you lost? Nothing!)
Always look on the right side of life...
-
David Bostwick
>David Bostwick <david.b...@chemistry.gatech.edu> wrote:
>
>> I know this has been said 100 times before, but do you really have reason to
>> believe that culling will improve existing groups? This isn't a garden.
>
>I have no direct evidence that it will improve them, but I believe that
>it will.
I have no direct evidence that culling will hurt or help, but I believe
there's more potential for harm than good. Our conclusions can only be proven
by making a decision, so vote. The rest of us can argue for or against, but
you have the final say. I haven't seen any change in the board's position,
and I don't expect one. Vote, and let's move on.
David Bostwick
>On Mon, 7 Feb 2011 13:25:21 CST, John Santos
><john....@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
[...]
>
>
>>I also object to the removal of comp.os.decus.
>
>Why? It's run its course, just like a program that has reached its
>termination condition but did not terminate. It's time for the sysop to
>manually intervene.
>
But it's not taking up any memory cycles, or any other real resources. Apples
and oranges.
If it's time to intervene, do it. Get it over with.
David Bostwick
Correct. The arguments may be long, but the vote will be short.
Dave Sill
> I have no direct evidence that culling will hurt or help, but I believe
> there's more potential for harm than good. Our conclusions can only be
> proven by making a decision, so vote. The rest of us can argue for or
> against, but you have the final say. I haven't seen any change in the
> board's position, and I don't expect one. Vote, and let's move on.
The Board hasn't expressed its opinion yet. The RFD means only that the
Board is willing to vote on the issue. Individually, we all have our
opinions on the merits of culling, but those opinions--and the list of
groups to be removed--are subject to change based on comments made during
the discussion.
It may look like this is a done deal, but until we vote nobody really
knows.
-Dave
David Bostwick
>On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:24:11 -0600, David Bostwick wrote:
>
>> I have no direct evidence that culling will hurt or help, but I believe
>> there's more potential for harm than good. Our conclusions can only be
>> proven by making a decision, so vote. The rest of us can argue for or
>> against, but you have the final say. I haven't seen any change in the
>> board's position, and I don't expect one. Vote, and let's move on.
>
>The Board hasn't expressed its opinion yet. The RFD means only that the
>Board is willing to vote on the issue. Individually, we all have our
>opinions on the merits of culling, but those opinions--and the list of
>groups to be removed--are subject to change based on comments made during
>the discussion.
>
Members of the board have expressed views that indicate their vote. Agreed,
not all have done that, but the comments of those who have suggest that the
vote will be to cull groups. There has been no movement that I've seen that
anyone has changed his or her original position, and I don't expect a change.
Arguments have been presented in favor of keeping empty groups (some or all),
but the arguments don't appear to carry much weight with the board. The most
accurate statement I've heard is summed up by what Kathy said: No one knows
if the results will be good or bad, but (most of) the board thinks it's a good
idea.
>It may look like this is a done deal, but until we vote nobody really
>knows.
>
I may be wrong, but I'm confident that the vote will be to cull groups. The
number of groups may change. The vote may not be unanimous, although I
expect that it will be. I have no doubts, however, that it's a done deal.
David Bostwick
>David Bostwick wrote:
>> [...]
>> You ask for opinions from others about keeping groups, and then you dismiss
>> those opinions with non sequiturs. Do you wonder why others have the opinion
>
>> that the board has never given a rat's whisker about anyone else? I didn't
>> have that opinion when the keys were transferred, but it's getting harder to
>> argue against it.
>
>Do you want to use comp.os.decus?
>Do you know somebody else who wants to?
>
Can you show *any* evidence that anyone has been harmed by *any* empty group?
When I used DEC computers, DECUS was interesting. I don't have the same
interest in it, but others might (or not), and it seems silly just to cull
groups because the "messiness" offends some.
>Anyway, you might be relieved to know that I really like the facial
>features of rodents, though a penchant for feline company has pre-
>vented further study.
>
Non-responsive. Don't be surprised that some people think the board is a
group of autocrats when that's the way they act. Since the transfer of the
keys, the suggestion that the board believes Usenet "belongs" to them has
become more and more believable. You may not have that opinion, but your
actions speak louder than your words. We all know what the outcome is going
to be. Take the vote, cull the groups, and this argument will be moot. There
will be a lot of complaining as there was several years ago when voting for
the masses ceased, but it will die down. We can then get on with a better,
more active Usenet rising like a phoenix.
Doug Freyburger
>
> Given enough time, the Big 8 will contain exactly 8 groups.
If they are well used groups why is that a problem? Technologies grow
and shrink and they should reflect that. But how long in the future do
you mean? There are plenty of active groups that get good traffic and
the proposed culling only lists dead ones.
> You ask for opinions from others about keeping groups, and then you dismiss
> those opinions with non sequiturs.
What I see is very different. There is an objective reality that groups
in the list are dead. I asked about threads without responses and that
was answered to my satisfaction. There have been posts objecting to any
group removal that are matters of opinion. It is clear to me from
context that the folks making such posts will not be convinced no matter
what the discussion. There are posts objecting to specific group
removal that are matters of hope of future traffic. It is clear to me
from context that the folks making such posts will not be convinced no
matter what the discussion. What there is very little of is reports
of actual traffic in the groups. If you want some group to stay start
posting and get folks to respond. Bingo the group is alive.
> Do you wonder why others have the opinion
> that the board has never given a rat's whisker about anyone else?
When the opinions are irrelevant, as in this case of people objecting
based on opinion or hopes, then it's just noise. All over UseNet noise
is abundant. It's part of why votes stopped being useful - Folks
started gaming and abusing votes. There reaches a point when listening
to noise comes with the realization that noise needs to be ignored.
Where is the boundary between trolls, kooks, spammers and other abusers
complaining just to have noise to read and someone with a valid
objection? In this context it becomes trivial to decide - Look at the
traffic in the group under discussion. No traffic, conclude that the
objection is noise.
Think about how objections are or aren't noise. Then start posting
discussion in dead groups to make them not dead. Then remember the
effort a couple of years ago to post reviews of newsgroups. It died
quickly for lack of content. Is it worth it to you to save a group by
generating traffic that then dies back down again? All you'll acheive
is a delay and the group will appear in another list in another year or
two. And you'll end up frustrated with an understanding of what's
happening and likely still not agree.
Or your efforts will work and result in actual traffic in one or more
groups. Manage that and you're a hero I say.
Alexander Bartolich
> [...]
> Arguments have been presented in favor of keeping empty groups (some or all),
> but the arguments don't appear to carry much weight with the board. The most
> accurate statement I've heard is summed up by what Kathy said: No one knows
> if the results will be good or bad, but (most of) the board thinks it's a good
> idea.
> I may be wrong, but I'm confident that the vote will be to cull groups. The
> number of groups may change. The vote may not be unanimous, although I
> expect that it will be. I have no doubts, however, that it's a done deal.
Of course the public discussion was preceded by an internal discussion,
and the resulting policy is a compromise designed to achieve a majority.
With this background in mind I doubt that the arguments of the fundamen-
talists will fly. If you think that
- the BIG8 should be unmanaged,
- the BIG8 should be not managed by a board,
- the current composition of the B8MB is wrong,
- mass removal of groups is wrong,
- or any removal of groups is wrong
then save your breath.
What we are looking for is
- evidence that we missed valuable traffic,
- indications that the group can be resurrected,
- and the unexpected.
As the board will vote on each group individually it is IMHO quite pos-
sible that groups are spared if only somebody can convincingly tell that
he and his buddies is going to use it.
Ciao
Alexander.
Mark Kramer
Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>"Mark Kramer" <c28...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
>news:iiq22t$7lu$1...@vulture.killfile.org...
>> how does removing the only group that is on-topic help them?
>
>Can you give an example of such a group being subject to this RFD?
Every one of them. By definition, each group in that list is considered
the "on-topic" group for that subject.
>For example, if comp.org.decus were to be rmgrouped, comp.misc,
>comp.org.user-groups.misc or comp.os.misc could be used instead. There
>does not have to be a specific group for every conceivable topic;
Your straw man is on fire. Who said there has to be "a specific group
for every conceivable topic?" We're talking about a relatively limited
set of topics, considering the large number of conceivable topics.
>it is
>better to have less specific groups with a greater quantity of on-topic
>traffic.
Removing these dead groups will do nothing to increase traffic in the
other groups. Either there is no traffic so they are dead and can be
removed, or there is traffic that you want to consolidate. You can't
argue both ways.
Mark Kramer
Alexander Bartolich <alexander...@gmx.at> wrote:
>What we are looking for is
>- evidence that we missed valuable traffic,
>- indications that the group can be resurrected,
>- and the unexpected.
Yes, the discussion of whether doing this at all is good or bad
is moot.
>As the board will vote on each group individually
Where in the process does it say that an RFD is voted on in pieces?
This is one RFD, it takes one vote.
Mark Kramer
Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
>Mark Kramer wrote:
>
>> Despite its name, the active file is a list of EXISTING groups, not
>> a list of groups with activity within the last undefined number of days.
>
>The thing we're talking about is not "the active file".
The thing being talked about in the message I replied to was specifically
"the active file". The overarching discussion may be about changes that
will be made to the canonical Big 8 list of newsgroups, but this tiny
part of it was, indeed, "the active file".
The person I replied to was basing an argument in favor of changing
the canonical list on the misconception of what "the active file"
really is.
>It's the list
>of newsgroups maintained by the big-8 board, and the board has the
>responsibility of defining what it is.
Yes, the canonical list is the board's. The active file is the news
system's.
>There are those who want to make it useful;
There are those who want to make it useless and frustrating. The
"active file" at a server is maintained by the admins, and having
those reflect a different picture of "active" depending on which
site one reads news at only creates frustration, not clears it up.
I point to this very group as an example. Do you not believe that
it is frustrating to have to keep different configurations and use
different servers when one wishes to participate in both news.groups
and news.groups.proposals?
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
>> ... the board will vote on each group individually
>Where in the process does it say that an RFD is voted on in pieces?
>This is one RFD, it takes one vote.
Uh, it says it on the policy page that I references earlier.
http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Mass_removal_of_groups
Stage 4
The board votes on each newsgroup individually.
Available options are Yes, No and Abstain.
The ballot will start with a summary vote at the top.
Followed by a list of items (one line per group) where
exceptions to the summary vote can be specified.
Marty
--
Member of the Big-8 Management Board (B8MB) <http://www.big-8.org>
Unless otherwise indicated, I speak for myself, not for the Board.
Thor Kottelin
> In article <iiqu8j$iov$1...@news.albasani.net>,
> Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>>"Mark Kramer" <c28...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
>>news:iiq22t$7lu$1...@vulture.killfile.org...
>>For example, if comp.org.decus were to be rmgrouped, comp.misc,
>>comp.org.user-groups.misc or comp.os.misc could be used instead. There
>>does not have to be a specific group for every conceivable topic;
>
> Your straw man is on fire. Who said there has to be "a specific group
> for every conceivable topic?" We're talking about a relatively limited
> set of topics, considering the large number of conceivable topics.
Should those particular topics have groups that nobody uses? If so, why?
>>it is
>>better to have less specific groups with a greater quantity of on-topic
>>traffic.
>
> Removing these dead groups will do nothing to increase traffic in the
> other groups. Either there is no traffic so they are dead and can be
> removed, or there is traffic that you want to consolidate.
I am willing to take the chance that less specific groups will become more
active when the distraction of dead groups is alleviated. In any case, it
does not make sense to keep groups that have remained abandoned for an
extended time. Such groups are likely to frustrate users and drive them to
other forums.
David Bostwick
>> [...]
>> Arguments have been presented in favor of keeping empty groups (some or all),
>
>> but the arguments don't appear to carry much weight with the board. The most
>
>> accurate statement I've heard is summed up by what Kathy said: No one knows
>> if the results will be good or bad, but (most of) the board thinks it's a
> good
>> idea.
>> [...]
>> I may be wrong, but I'm confident that the vote will be to cull groups. The
>> number of groups may change. The vote may not be unanimous, although I
>> expect that it will be. I have no doubts, however, that it's a done deal.
>
>Of course the public discussion was preceded by an internal discussion,
>and the resulting policy is a compromise designed to achieve a majority.
>With this background in mind I doubt that the arguments of the fundamen-
>talists will fly.
The statements made by board members have been very clear on that. There's no
real reason to discuss things in public, since the important decisions are
made in private. That's become more obvious with time.
If fundamentalists is meant as a synonym for rigid, the term applies to the
board more than to others.
> If you think that
>- the BIG8 should be unmanaged,
>- the BIG8 should be not managed by a board,
>- the current composition of the B8MB is wrong,
I didn't have an insurmountable problem with the creation of a board. I don't
think it was the best decision, but there wasn't a lot I could do about it, so
I didn't fuss a lot. The keys were transferred, the board was created, and
nothing was going to change, so it was a waste of energy to complain about it
or try to change anything about it. When I was asked to consider joining, I
declined partly because I thought its creation was not a good idea, but mainly
because I had neither the time to do it, nor the desire to deflect the flak I
knew would be coming. Since then, I've either defended what the board has
done, or I've been fairly silent
>- mass removal of groups is wrong,
>- or any removal of groups is wrong
>then save your breath.
>
That's what I've said, but yours is the most succint way of saying it that
I've heard. Others have beaten around the bush, but the sentiment was the
same. If the first comments had been as succint, maybe a lot of electrons
wouldn't have had to give their lives.
>What we are looking for is
>- evidence that we missed valuable traffic,
>- indications that the group can be resurrected,
>- and the unexpected.
>
>As the board will vote on each group individually it is IMHO quite pos-
>sible that groups are spared if only somebody can convincingly tell that
>he and his buddies is going to use it.
>
"Convincingly" is the key. One has to be willing to be persuaded, but I
haven't seen a lot of evidence of that.
And now, for the 42nd time, I'll quit tilting at windmills and get on with the
real world.
Thor Kottelin
> The person I replied to was basing an argument in favor of changing
> the canonical list on the misconception of what "the active file"
> really is.
There was no such misconception on my part.
Steve Bonine
> Alexander Bartolich wrote:
>> Of course the public discussion was preceded by an internal discussion,
>> and the resulting policy is a compromise designed to achieve a majority.
>> With this background in mind I doubt that the arguments of the fundamen-
>> talists will fly.
>
> The statements made by board members have been very clear on that. There's no
> real reason to discuss things in public, since the important decisions are
> made in private. That's become more obvious with time.
In every case where there's "management by committee", the committee
discusses the options and makes a decision. It is not evil. It is the
way things happen.
> If fundamentalists is meant as a synonym for rigid, the term applies to the
> board more than to others.
The board made a decision with which you disagree. If they can't make a
decision and stick with it, they're wishy washy. Dubbing them "rigid"
because they are unwilling to change a basic policy decision based on
your objections is a bit harsh.
"Fundamentalists" is an interesting word choice, but I think that what's
more interesting is that there was a list of 200 newsgroups published,
and not a single person has provided a single objective reason for
keeping a single one of them. There have been objections to the basic
idea of removing newsgroups, but no one has indicated that any of the
listed newsgroups might be used, has offered to use them, has offered to
persuade other people to use them, or explained why they should remain
even with zero traffic.
>> What we are looking for is
>> - evidence that we missed valuable traffic,
>> - indications that the group can be resurrected,
>> - and the unexpected.
>>
>> As the board will vote on each group individually it is IMHO quite pos-
>> sible that groups are spared if only somebody can convincingly tell that
>> he and his buddies is going to use it.
> "Convincingly" is the key. One has to be willing to be persuaded, but I
> haven't seen a lot of evidence of that.
Have you seen any
- evidence that they missed valuable traffic,
- indications that the group can be resurrected,
- and the unexpected.
I haven't.
Alexander Bartolich
> Alexander Bartolich <alexander...@gmx.at> wrote:
>>[...]
>>Of course the public discussion was preceded by an internal discussion,
>>and the resulting policy is a compromise designed to achieve a majority.
>>With this background in mind I doubt that the arguments of the fundamen-
>>talists will fly.
>
> The statements made by board members have been very clear on that. There's no
> real reason to discuss things in public, since the important decisions are
> made in private. That's become more obvious with time.
Well, the RFD was published under the name of the B8MB. It would be
quite silly to do that without being supported by a majority of the
board. Also, last June we had an open, lengthy discussion about this
topic in news.groups.
http://groups.google.com/group/news.groups/browse_frm/thread/be6961321f79ce27
> If fundamentalists is meant as a synonym for rigid, the term applies
> to the board more than to others.
I meant it as an antonym of "pragmatic". The B8MB is a small crew of
all-volunteers operating on a shoestring budget. We need to choose
between trade-offs all the time.
> [...]
> I didn't have an insurmountable problem with the creation of a board. I don't
> think it was the best decision, but there wasn't a lot I could do about it, so
> I didn't fuss a lot. The keys were transferred,
Control of the PGP keys did not actually change.
The power structure of the BIG8 thus resembles the early stages of the
English democracy. There is a "head of state" high above mere mortals
(or any kind of voting), some kind of "parliament" that drafts a lot
of "laws", and an agreement that the head of state will sign all laws
brought forward by the speaker of parliament. If development continues
on this path we could see the establishment of a "lower house" in the
next decades.
> [...] When I was asked to consider joining, I declined partly because
> I thought its creation was not a good idea, but mainly because I had
> neither the time to do it, nor the desire to deflect the flak I knew
> would be coming. Since then, I've either defended what the board has
> done, or I've been fairly silent
Hmm. So you are actually the loyal opposition?
Sorry if I have been too harsh to you.
>>[...]
>>As the board will vote on each group individually it is IMHO quite pos-
>>sible that groups are spared if only somebody can convincingly tell that
>>he and his buddies is going to use it.
>
> "Convincingly" is the key. One has to be willing to be persuaded, but I
> haven't seen a lot of evidence of that.
Hard to tell. So far no genuine user of a targeted groups pleaded for
a second chance. But then we deliberately started the first round with
a ridiculously high threshold that should catch only thoroughly dead
groups.
> And now, for the 42nd time, I'll quit tilting at windmills and get on
> with the real world.
Godspeed!
Ciao
Alexander.
Rui Maciel
> I'd read (some...) distribution-specific Linux groups, myself, though
> I'm not entirely convinced they'd contain conversations that don't
> already exist in the dozen or so existing comp.os.linux.* groups.
The comp.os.linux.* groups tend to be either generic (i.e., groups such as
comp.os.linux.{misc,advocacy}) or covering very specific features and
aspects generally implemented by all implementations (groups such as
comp.os.linux.{networking,portable,x...}. Yet, these groups fail to
attract users and generate traffic. With the exception of the advocacy
group, which is basically dedicated to trolling, the distro-specific
groups from alt.os.linux tend to generate more traffic than even
comp.os.linux.misc.
Meanwhile, groups such as Ubuntu forums get considerably more traffic than
all comp.os.linux.* groups put together, along with alt.os.linux.* groups,
and it does so even when considering that it's user interface is horrible.
This is a clear sign that something isn't being done right with usenet.
> There are comp.lang.perl.* groups already.
Shame on me. I've searched for them but I only managed to get groups from
the alt.* hierarchy. My bad.
Rui Maciel
Rui Maciel
> I am willing to take the chance that less specific groups will become
> more active when the distraction of dead groups is alleviated. In any
> case, it does not make sense to keep groups that have remained abandoned
> for an extended time. Such groups are likely to frustrate users and
> drive them to other forums.
Quite the contrary. The absense of groups dedicated to specific issues
will force people to rely on other forums to discuss them, or at the very
least will fail to attract them to usenet. Other forums, particularly
web-based ones, generally pop out of nowhere without anyone following
them, which then proceed to gradually attract users as time goes by.
Those new users are attracted to those forums simply because they exist
and were discoverable. If usenet fails to offer dedicated groups to host
those discussions then new users will have absolutely no reason to
discover usenet, let alone follow specific usenet newsgroups. This is a
vicious cycle and one of the reasons behind usenet's dwindling population.
Rui Maciel
Rob Kelk
>"Mark Kramer" <c28...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
>news:iis6fs$rj1$1...@vulture.killfile.org...
>
>> The person I replied to was basing an argument in favor of changing
>> the canonical list on the misconception of what "the active file"
>> really is.
>
>There was no such misconception on my part.
Which active file were you referencing, then? The one at Google, the one
at Individual.net, the one at Giganews, the one on your home hobbyist
news server, or something else?
You did say "the active file" instead of "an active file" or "the active
files"...
--
Rob Kelk Personal address (ROT-13): eboxryx -ng- tznvy -qbg- pbz
Any opinions here are mine, not ONAG's.
ott.* newsgroup charters: <http://onag.pinetree.org>
Any Usenet message claiming to be from me but posted from any server
other than individual.net is a forgery. Please filter out such
messages if you have the capability.
Richard Kettlewell
> Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> I'd read (some...) distribution-specific Linux groups, myself, though
>> I'm not entirely convinced they'd contain conversations that don't
>> already exist in the dozen or so existing comp.os.linux.* groups.
>
> The comp.os.linux.* groups tend to be either generic (i.e., groups such as
> comp.os.linux.{misc,advocacy}) or covering very specific features and
> aspects generally implemented by all implementations (groups such as
> comp.os.linux.{networking,portable,x...}. Yet, these groups fail to
> attract users and generate traffic. With the exception of the advocacy
> group, which is basically dedicated to trolling, the distro-specific
> groups from alt.os.linux tend to generate more traffic than even
> comp.os.linux.misc.
I don't carry alt at the moment so I don't know about those.
> Meanwhile, groups such as Ubuntu forums get considerably more traffic than
> all comp.os.linux.* groups put together, along with alt.os.linux.* groups,
> and it does so even when considering that it's user interface is horrible.
> This is a clear sign that something isn't being done right with usenet.
Usenet is just one alternative among many these days. Best to live with
it rather than worry about it, IMHO.
Steve Bonine
> Quite the contrary. The absense of groups dedicated to specific issues
> will force people to rely on other forums to discuss them,
So we need a newsgroup for each performer, each TV show, every flavor of
every piece of software ever made? That's just not the way that Usenet
works. Historically new newsgroups have been created when there was
sufficient traffic in the more general newsgroup to justify creating them.
> or at the very
> least will fail to attract them to usenet.
You imply that having the specific newsgroup will attract people to
Usenet. A newsgroup with no traffic has attracted no one. A newsgroup
on token ring networking attracts the people who want to discuss that
topic, but since there is no traffic in that newsgroup we can safely
assume that no one wants to discuss token ring. The same can be said
for each of the 200 groups proposed for removal.
> Other forums, particularly
> web-based ones, generally pop out of nowhere without anyone following
> them, which then proceed to gradually attract users as time goes by.
> Those new users are attracted to those forums simply because they exist
> and were discoverable.
This is a justification for creating new newsgroups on current popular
topics. It is not a justification for retaining dead newsgroups that
have demonstrated that they attract no one.
> If usenet fails to offer dedicated groups to host
> those discussions then new users will have absolutely no reason to
> discover usenet, let alone follow specific usenet newsgroups. This is a
> vicious cycle and one of the reasons behind usenet's dwindling population.
I agree with this logic for current topics, but it does not suggest that
keeping dead newsgroups is in anyone's best interest. It sounds rather
like the "obvious groups" plan tried in the past, and that project was
not exactly a resounding success.
Thor Kottelin
news:4d528bf...@news.individual.net...
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2011 18:10:41 CST, "Thor Kottelin" <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>
>>"Mark Kramer" <c28...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
>>news:iis6fs$rj1$1...@vulture.killfile.org...
>>
>>> The person I replied to was basing an argument in favor of changing
>>> the canonical list on the misconception of what "the active file"
>>> really is.
>>
>>There was no such misconception on my part.
>
> Which active file were you referencing, then?
> You did say "the active file" instead of "an active file" or "the active
> files"...
The discussion was about how to make it easy for users to find groups. I
was referencing the active file on the server to which any given user
connects when looking for groups. Well-run servers carry identical sets of
Big-8 groups anyhow.
If someone really finds it interesting to contemplate whether I know what
the active file on a news server is, I suggest carrying out a web or
Google Groups search of things I have written previously. It is not much,
but it should be enough.
Rui Maciel
>> Meanwhile, groups such as Ubuntu forums get considerably more traffic
>> than all comp.os.linux.* groups put together, along with alt.os.linux.*
>> groups, and it does so even when considering that it's user interface
>> is horrible. This is a clear sign that something isn't being done right
>> with Usenet.
>
> Usenet is just one alternative among many these days. Best to live with
> it rather than worry about it, IMHO.
The point that I'm trying to make is that, due to the way it has been
managed, Usenet has since ceased to be an alternative. As a consequence,
it is gradually being killed off, if it hasn't died already. The only
positive aspect regarding this death march is that it's being conducted in
full conformance with the old established rules, and it appears that in
some people's minds this blind conformance with the old rules is more
important than preserving Usenet as a useful means of communication.
Rui Maciel
David Bostwick
>David Bostwick wrote:
>> Alexander Bartolich wrote:
>
>>> Of course the public discussion was preceded by an internal discussion,
>>> and the resulting policy is a compromise designed to achieve a majority.
>>> With this background in mind I doubt that the arguments of the fundamen-
>>> talists will fly.
>>
>> The statements made by board members have been very clear on that. There's
> no
>> real reason to discuss things in public, since the important decisions are
>> made in private. That's become more obvious with time.
>
>In every case where there's "management by committee", the committee
>discusses the options and makes a decision. It is not evil. It is the
>way things happen.
Yep, but why go through the motions of a debate? Make the decision and go
ahead. Was the years-long "discussion" about the creation of the board
that much fun?
>
>> If fundamentalists is meant as a synonym for rigid, the term applies to the
>> board more than to others.
>
>The board made a decision with which you disagree. If they can't make a
>decision and stick with it, they're wishy washy. Dubbing them "rigid"
>because they are unwilling to change a basic policy decision based on
>your objections is a bit harsh.
>
>"Fundamentalists" is an interesting word choice, but I think that what's
>more interesting is that there was a list of 200 newsgroups published,
>and not a single person has provided a single objective reason for
>keeping a single one of them. There have been objections to the basic
>idea of removing newsgroups, but no one has indicated that any of the
>listed newsgroups might be used, has offered to use them, has offered to
>persuade other people to use them, or explained why they should remain
>even with zero traffic.
>
The term "fundamentalists" is usually meant as a pejorative. It usually means
someone who is rigid in their beliefs, which is seen as a bad thing by those
who disagree with them. I believe that's the way Alexander meant it, and the
board is at least as rigid as anyone who disagrees with them. They've made a
big deal about discussing the issue, but any objections are met with disdain
or comparisons to temples, or they're just ignored.
The board has the keys and can make whatever decisions they deem best. I
don't really have a say (my choice), and yes, I disagree with the mass
culling, but I'd respect the decision more without the pretense of a debate.
At least Alexander said what he meant. That's honest, and I'll probably get
over my snit in a little while.
Dave Sill
> I agree with this logic for current topics, but it does not suggest that
> keeping dead newsgroups is in anyone's best interest. It sounds rather
> like the "obvious groups" plan tried in the past, and that project was
> not exactly a resounding success.
The "obvious" groups created were a mixed bag. A couple succeeded, most
failed. But the project, which was an experiment to see if the idea would
work, was a success. We now know that if-you-build-it-they-will-come is
likely to fail in the Big 8, and that's a good thing to know.
-Dave
Alexander Bartolich
> [...]
> Quite the contrary. The absense of groups dedicated to specific issues
> will force people to rely on other forums to discuss them, or at the very
> least will fail to attract them to usenet. Other forums, particularly
> web-based ones, generally pop out of nowhere without anyone following
> them, which then proceed to gradually attract users as time goes by.
> Those new users are attracted to those forums simply because they exist
> and were discoverable.
http://www.wikihow.com/Create-and-Maintain-a-Successful-Forum
Check step 7 and the following items.
--
host -t mx moderators.isc.org
Dave Sill
> The point that I'm trying to make is that, due to the way it has been
> managed, Usenet has since ceased to be an alternative.
What evidence do you have of the reason for the decline?
> As a
> consequence, it is gradually being killed off, if it hasn't died
> already.
Is it being killed off or is it dying on its own? It's not dead or we
wouldn't be having this conversation.
-Dave
Brad Templeton
I dunno. Most people would say Gopher is dead, that it died in the
mid 90s, but there are still some gopher servers out there. Doesn't
mean it's not correct to day it's dead though.
--
Brad Templeton's gallery of giant panormamic photos from around the world...
http://www.templetons.com/brad/pano
Mark Kramer
>wouldn't be having this conversation.
Every death on the operating table has a full-length review of procedures
and events in the hope that the next failure can be prevented. So yes,
this conversation would be taking place in either case.
Mark Kramer
Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>The discussion was about how to make it easy for users to find groups. I
>was referencing the active file on the server to which any given user
>connects when looking for groups. Well-run servers carry identical sets of
>Big-8 groups anyhow.
That is not true. Well-run servers may choose not to carry groups in
which their readers have no interest. It is arguable that there will
not be additional groups in the Big-8 hierarchies in an active file of
a "well-run server" (which is a tautology, since "well-run" is usually
defined as "obeys the Big 8 checkgrp messages"), but it is inidisputable
that a subset is completely acceptable. This is why binary groups are
supposed to be well identified, for example.
>If someone really finds it interesting to contemplate whether I know what
>the active file on a news server is, I suggest carrying out a web or
>Google Groups search of things I have written previously. It is not much,
>but it should be enough.
I go by what you say here. I have no way of knowing if any "Thor Kottelin"
who appears on the web somewhere is the same person posting here, but
I do know that the person posting here wrote what appears here.
Mark Kramer
Alexander Bartolich <alexander...@gmx.at> wrote:
>Well, the RFD was published under the name of the B8MB. It would be
>quite silly to do that without being supported by a majority of the
>board.
No, it would not. An RFD is a request for discussion, not an announcement
of results. The discussion is supposed to be used by the board to
determine interest and applicability.
If the board has already determined that the majority support a proposal,
why post an RFD at all? Just post the result. The answer to that question
is that the discussion may change someone's mind and they will change
to a 'yes' vote, just as the discussion of what the board already has
a majority approval for may create 'no' votes.
Now, the board has to vet the proposal itself, but that's entirely
different than being if favor of the proposal.
Kathy Morgan
> the board is at least as rigid as anyone who disagrees with them. They've
> made a big deal about discussing the issue, but any objections are met
> with disdain or comparisons to temples, or they're just ignored.
I'm sorry for appearing to ignore the objections. I did not at first
realize that in this thread we were holding two different discussions.
While I thought we were talking about "which, if any, of these
particular groups should be retained?" people have been objecting to the
concept of mass removals, or basically any removals at all. I have
mostly not been responding to those objections because I didn't realize
that was the conversation we were having.
The Board believes [1] that having so many dead groups is a bad thing
and so many have accumulated that removing them one at a time is far too
slow, hence the mass removal idea. We have been asking for feedback
about these particular groups: are there any of them for which there is
a convincing argument that the group should be retained?
With regard to objections to or support for removing dead groups, it
seems to me that we have two camps. Each has strong feelings about the
subject but neither has any concrete evidence to support their opinion.
In that respect, yes, this is sort of a religious issue.
[1] Many others also feel that having many dead groups is a bad thing.
There have been posts here and in news.groups in support of the culling,
and discussions and attempts to create guidelines in news.groups back to
before 1997.
<http://groups.google.com/groups/search?as_q=Guidelines+for+group+remova
l&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=100&scoring=&lr=&as_sitesearch=&as_drrb=q&as
_qdr=&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=2011&as_maxd=1&as_maxm=1&as_maxy=2011&
as_ugroup=news.groups&as_usubject=&as_uauthors=&safe=off>
--
Kathy, speaking only for myself
Mark Kramer
Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>Should those particular topics have groups that nobody uses? If so, why?
Yes.
1. They passed the hurdles required at the time for creation.
2. They have had a history of use.
3. They already exist.
4. Attempting to delete them will result in spotty results.
5. They cause no damage and consume no resources (other than a few
characters and an inode).
>I am willing to take the chance that less specific groups will become more
>active when the distraction of dead groups is alleviated.
What evidence do you have that this will happen? Where will all this new
activity come from if there is nobody in the dead groups that would be
forced to move to the new ones? The only way traffic in other groups would
increase is if there were people in the dead ones who moved. Which is it?
>In any case, it
>does not make sense to keep groups that have remained abandoned for an
>extended time. Such groups are likely to frustrate users and drive them to
>other forums.
You have it exactly backwards. When the topic I want to talk about
dissappears from this forum, I will be more likley to go elsewhere.
Rui Maciel
> On Wed, 09 Feb 2011 10:41:29 -0600, Rui Maciel wrote:
>
>> The point that I'm trying to make is that, due to the way it has been
>> managed, Usenet has since ceased to be an alternative.
>
> What evidence do you have of the reason for the decline?
The two most frequently quoted causes/explanations of Usenet's death are:
- spam (a minor problem)
- the inception of other forums (a major problem)
The latter constitutes a major problem not because it generates
competition but simply due to the fact that, due to the way Usenet has
been managed, it has become far easier to develop, install and run custom-
tailored applications designed to implement a public means of
communication on a private server allocated somewhere in the world than to
simply post a small control message to create a newsgroup.
>> As a
>> consequence, it is gradually being killed off, if it hasn't died
>> already.
>
> Is it being killed off or is it dying on its own? It's not dead or we
> wouldn't be having this conversation.
A means of communication doesn't just die on it's own. It's missmanaged
to death.
Regarding your "it's not dead" comment, one doesn't need to be rotting 6
feet under to be considered dead[1].
Rui Maciel
Rob Kelk
wrote:
<snip>
> If usenet fails to offer dedicated groups to host
>those discussions then new users will have absolutely no reason to
>discover usenet, let alone follow specific usenet newsgroups. This is a
>vicious cycle and one of the reasons behind usenet's dwindling population.
If your hypothesis was correct, then the specific-issue groups that are
being suggested for removal would be attracting pewople and would be
used. These groups are not being used. Your hypothesis appears to be
incorrect.
Rob Kelk
wrote:
>In article <iisdrg$p89$1...@news.albasani.net>,
>Thor Kottelin <th...@anta.net> wrote:
>>Should those particular topics have groups that nobody uses? If so, why?
>
>Yes.
>
>1. They passed the hurdles required at the time for creation.
That is not a reason to keep something. That isn't even an excuse to
keep something. (Many things have passed the hurdles required at the
time for creation, and have later been repealed. Prohibition is one
example.)
>2. They have had a history of use.
Usenet is not a shrine to "what used to be".
>3. They already exist.
That is not a reason to keep something. That isn't even an excuse to
keep something. (Clutter should be removed.)
>4. Attempting to delete them will result in spotty results.
Evidence from the removal of moderated newsgroups indicates that
well-run news servers will honor the rmgroup messages. Poorly-run news
servers... well, nothing affects them one way or the other.
>5. They cause no damage and consume no resources (other than a few
>characters and an inode).
You are extremely willing to volunteer the inodes on other people's
systems. When will you start paying for the disk space you're giving
away?
>>I am willing to take the chance that less specific groups will become more
>>active when the distraction of dead groups is alleviated.
>
>What evidence do you have that this will happen?
Evidence does not exist either way, because nobody has attempted the
experiment. I think it's time to attempt the experiment.
> Where will all this new
>activity come from if there is nobody in the dead groups that would be
>forced to move to the new ones? The only way traffic in other groups would
>increase is if there were people in the dead ones who moved. Which is it?
How many people look at the multiplicity of empty groups on a set of
closely-related topics, then leave because it's "obvious" none of them
are being used?
No, I don't have that number, either. Nobody does.
>>In any case, it
>>does not make sense to keep groups that have remained abandoned for an
>>extended time. Such groups are likely to frustrate users and drive them to
>>other forums.
>
>You have it exactly backwards. When the topic I want to talk about
>dissappears from this forum, I will be more likley to go elsewhere.
What is currently on the table are topics that *nobody* wants to talk
about. If someone wanted to talk about them, they would be doing so, the
topics' groups would not be empty, and the topics' groups would not be
on this list.
Kathy Morgan
> A means of communication doesn't just die on it's own. It's missmanaged
> to death.
That's an unsupported claim which is invalid in general and may also be
invalid in the case of Usenet. Consider, for example, the telegraph.
It died because more popular means of communication supplanted it.
It's my understanding that traffic in non-binary alt.* has also dropped.
Alt.* is unmanaged, so it can't be that alt.* is getting missmanaged to
death.
You may be right, though, that maybe failure to properly manage the Big8
by pruning dead groups is contributing to the decline of Big 8 traffic;
I believe we should remedy that failure.
--
Kathy, speaking just for myself
Doug Freyburger
To me Steve answered that lower in the post you cited.
>>Have you seen any
>> - evidence that they missed valuable traffic,
>> - indications that the group can be resurrected,
>> - and the unexpected.
>>
>>I haven't.
In all this discussion no one pointed to missed traffic under a year old.
Looping on topics where agreement will never be reached? Noise does
need to be viewed as noise at some point. But the process isn't about
the noise. It's about whether the groups have had traffic and whether
there is any reasonable expectation any of them will have traffic.
There are several groups I used to subscribe to in the list. I'd love
them to still have traffic but not enough to generate traffic myself.
And that's the difference. If I don't post there then I understand why
a managed heirarchy should manage them. Agreeing about the details of
the management isn't the issue.
Brad Templeton
Rui Maciel <rui.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Dave Sill wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 09 Feb 2011 10:41:29 -0600, Rui Maciel wrote:
>>
>>> The point that I'm trying to make is that, due to the way it has been
>>> managed, Usenet has since ceased to be an alternative.
>>
>> What evidence do you have of the reason for the decline?
>
>The two most frequently quoted causes/explanations of Usenet's death are:
>- spam (a minor problem)
>- the inception of other forums (a major problem)
>
>The latter constitutes a major problem not because it generates
>competition but simply due to the fact that, due to the way Usenet has
>been managed, it has become far easier to develop, install and run custom-
>tailored applications designed to implement a public means of
>communication on a private server allocated somewhere in the world than to
>simply post a small control message to create a newsgroup.
>
Getting back to goals, as I see the biggest factor which will
lead to the non-imminent death of the net is that it no longer makes
sense to do things a certain way in the modern world of always-on,
high bandwidth networks. USENET's design comes from a world where a
Telebit modem was cool.
Because USENET no longer is a top choice for many forms of
discussion, not only will those discussions seek other locations,
but more and more sites and ISPs will ask whether it is worthwhile
to run a server, or even pay for a server. This points to a path
where there are just a modest number of big servers that everybody
connects to remotely via NNTP. Some people continue to suck down
a custom feed for themselves to get local speed but this becomes more
and more akin to RSS reading, though slightly more efficient in some
ways and more limited in others.
You reach a point where if people ask, "So, I want to have a place to
discuss topic X, what should I do?" and the answer "Start a USENET group"
is rarely, if ever cited. The legacy groups may continue but when
nobody wants to make a new group, it's time to put a stake in it.
Doug Freyburger
>
> The point that I'm trying to make is that, due to the way it has been
> managed, Usenet has since ceased to be an alternative. As a consequence,
> it is gradually being killed off, if it hasn't died already.
To me the management you mean is the folks at the large NSPs who have
financial incentive to mismanage their list of carried groups so they
can advertize large numbers of groups, who focus on binary groups and
mostly ignore text groups and who ignore user complaints about abuse.
Customer service matters. Ignore complaints of abuse and the customers
will go to some place that does not ignore such complaints.
Given that context I don't understand your objection to the board who
maintain the list of canonical Big-8 groups. A moderated forum was
established so proponents did not have to deal with the noise in the
unmoderated forum. Proponents used both groups. Proponents no longer
need to gather votes. The process of creating a new group has gotten
easier to anyone interested in making it easy. And there's an ongoing
garbage collection process removing dead newsgroups.
Rui Maciel
> http://www.wikihow.com/Create-and-Maintain-a-Successful-Forum
>
> Check step 7 and the following items.
You've pointed out a list of "advices and tips" on how to start a
successful forum. It is not a mandatory process which is/was followed by
every single person that was involved in starting a forum, let alone a
valid explanation regarding what leads all potential users to give any
forum a try.
Rui Maciel
Doug Freyburger
>
> The "obvious" groups created were a mixed bag. A couple succeeded, most
> failed. But the project, which was an experiment to see if the idea would
> work, was a success. We now know that if-you-build-it-they-will-come is
> likely to fail in the Big 8, and that's a good thing to know.
The lesson was also that some suceeded. As long as there is a garbage
collection process that pushes the canonical list towards groups that
are in use that suggests creating new groups should be easy. It is easy
for any proponent who choses to make it so. Several proponents have
decided otherwise of their own free will.
Rui Maciel
> The "obvious" groups created were a mixed bag. A couple succeeded, most
> failed. But the project, which was an experiment to see if the idea
> would work, was a success. We now know that
> if-you-build-it-they-will-come is likely to fail in the Big 8, and
> that's a good thing to know.
Although I doubt that the "if-you-build-it-they-will-come" approach does
fail (if that was the case then no group from the alt.* hierarchy would
ever be more popular than any group from the big8), considering the number
of people which is currently participating in discussions then relying on
popular acclaim to create new groups is also not a reasonable option.
That means that, considering this "Great Downsizing" campaign, Usenet is
left with a streamlined way to delete groups and no viable way to create
new ones. This does nothing to prevent Usenet's decline. Quite the
opposite, I'm afraid.
Rui Maciel
Rui Maciel
> If your hypothesis was correct, then the specific-issue groups that are
> being suggested for removal would be attracting pewople and would be
> used. These groups are not being used. Your hypothesis appears to be
> incorrect.
I'm not against the removal of dead groups. Quite the contrary. Yet, if
someone wishes to implement a streamlined process to delete newsgroups
then at the very least a equivalent process must be put in place to create
new groups.
Rui Maciel
Alexander Bartolich
> [...]
> The two most frequently quoted causes/explanations of Usenet's death are:
> - spam (a minor problem)
> - the inception of other forums (a major problem)
It's telling that you did not mention trolls and kooks.
> The latter constitutes a major problem not because it generates
> competition but simply due to the fact that, due to the way Usenet has
> been managed, it has become far easier to develop, install and run custom-
> tailored applications designed to implement a public means of
> communication on a private server allocated somewhere in the world than to
> simply post a small control message to create a newsgroup.
First of all, while it is indeed easy to start a web forum it is
extremly hard to create a *successful* one.
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
# [...] The normal experience of social software is failure. If you go
# into Yahoo groups and you map out the subscriptions, it is, unsurpris-
# ingly, a power law. There's a small number of highly populated groups,
# a moderate number of moderately populated groups, and this long, flat
# tail of failure. And the failure is inevitably more than 50% of the
# total mailing lists in any category. So it's not like a cake recipe.
# There's nothing you can do to make it come out right every time.
My corollary is that create-only hierarchies inevitable become unmanaged
or stagnant, and sometimes both. For example it is very hard to persuade
the operators of NID to carry additional alt.* groups, and outright
impossible with Google.
The big advantage of the web is that culling of failed boards happens
automatically there. Google's ranking is swift, merciless, and opaque.
The culture of Usenet prefers to do it out in the open, or rather to
quarrel, bitch and whine in the open until nothing is done at all.
Consequently unmanaged hierarchies like alt.* are trimmed into shape
by news server operators (swift, opaque and inconsistent), while man-
aged hierarchies like the BIG8 tend to just sit there and rust.
> [...]
> A means of communication doesn't just die on it's own. It's missmanaged
> to death.
So what would you do differently?
Kathy Morgan
> if someone wishes to implement a streamlined process to delete newsgroups
> then at the very least a equivalent process must be put in place to create
> new groups.
A streamlined process for creation of new groups was put in place
several years ago. All that's needed is for a proponent to submit an
RFD with some standard boilerplate, participate at least some in the
discussion, and then submit a request of the Last Call for Comments. If
desired by the proponent, there may be 2nd, 3rd, etc. RFD's revising the
proposal between the original RFD and the LCC, but that is not
mandatory.
If writing the RFD seems difficult or complicated, the group mentors can
assist with that part of the process.
--
Kathy
Rob Kelk
wrote:
>Rob Kelk wrote:
Fair enough. I believe a bulk-addition process may exist, but I've never
seen anybody ask to use it...
Rui Maciel
> Rui Maciel wrote:
>> [...]
>> The two most frequently quoted causes/explanations of Usenet's death
>> are: - spam (a minor problem)
>> - the inception of other forums (a major problem)
>
> It's telling that you did not mention trolls and kooks.
Can you please explain your comment?
The article you've posted doesn't really apply to this discussion, at
least in the sense that you've quoted it. Let me explain.
First of all, the definition of "success" which you refer to in your quote
refers loosely to the idea that a social network is only as valuable as
the number of individuals that defines it. That means, as you've quoted,
that a group constitutes a "failure" if its population is small. This
obviously isn't true, and this idea is even disputed and contradicted in
the very same article.
Even if we wrongly believe that a public forum, due to it's social aspect,
is only a "success" if it gathers crowds of people, we have to acknowledge
that we are talking Usenet newsgroups. Some may be used as a means to
socially interact with other people but others are primarily used to
discuss technical issues. The latter means that it is irrelevant if a
group is followed by 2 users or 2 million users; what matters is that
there is a core group of people that is dedicated to discuss technical
issues regarding specific subjects and therefore provide a valuable
service to anyone interested in that subject.
Due to this nature, this means that it is expectable that the group will
be filled with isolated, one-off posts made by users who only drop by to
ask for advice on specific problems they want to overcome. This means
that the group is destined to never become a "success" in the sense
derived from social networks, but it may be hugely successful in providing
an useful venue to learn and share valuable technical information on a
given subject.
Adding to this, the group may still be a success in it's true sense even
if the large majority of their potential users never read it, let alone
post or subscribe to the group. This is due to the fact that there are
companies who archive discussions and provide a way to search their back
catalogue. Again, when we consider newsgroups on technical subjects, even
if a newsgroup manages to generate little traffic over time, if the
traffic it generates covers information regarding technical issues and/or
how to solve typical problems associated with a technical field then
anyone with any interest in the subject may use one of those services to
access some ancient, isolated post sent to a "failure" of a newsgroup and,
from that, learn how to solve a problem and improve his skills.
Regarding the issue of how to create a successful group, this is yet
another non-issue. First of all, it is irrelevant if a group becomes
"unmanaged or stagnant, and sometimes both." It's irrelevant because,
first of all, a dead group doesn't bother anyone. It doesn't generate
traffic, it doesn't waste disk space, nothing. Secondly, it has become
even more irrelevant with the inception of this "Great Downsizing"
campaign. After all, what it brought to the table is that culling hordes
of dead groups is feasible, acceptable and even unilaterally supported by
the big8 board. Therefore, if cleaning up failed groups has suddenly
become a mundane task then naturally any expectation that a given group
will fail automatically becomes irrelevant as a reason to be against
creating that group. If it fails then you simply cull it in the next
downsizing round and then go on with your life. What's so bad about that?
>> [...]
>> A means of communication doesn't just die on it's own. It's
>> missmanaged to death.
>
> So what would you do differently?
As I've posted multiple times in this discussion, the Kafkaesque
bureaucracy that is imposed on any user that wishes to start a new group
should be completely eliminated. The newsgroup creation process must be
directed towards the community's best interests and should foster the
creation of new groups. Group creation should be seen as a positive
change to this medium instead of some sort offence to the status quo. It
should not be used as some sort of toll booth where the inconspicuous
users must pay some gatekeeper a payment in the form of an arcane ritual
designed to appeal to some entity's sense of purpose. It should also
acknowledge and follow the advice which was given in the article that
you've quoted above. If that advice keeps on getting ignored then the
same screwups which are referred in the article are bound to be repeated.
Rui Maciel
Mark Kramer
>competition but simply due to the fact that, due to the way Usenet has
>been managed, it has become far easier to develop, install and run custom-
>tailored applications designed to implement a public means of
>communication on a private server allocated somewhere in the world than to
>simply post a small control message to create a newsgroup.
There is no need to do any of that. Simply create a Google Group. You
don't need any private server or custom-tailored application.
Usenet can NEVER beat that unless you go to a free.* or alt.* system of
management. And because those systems of management exist, they prove
that the problem is NOT caused by the management, but by other things.
Those things happen to be what differentiates Usenet from "the web" --
group ownership, central repository, etc., and as such are unlikely
to change.
>A means of communication doesn't just die on it's own. It's missmanaged
>to death.
Was gopher mismanaged to death? Archie? WAIS? Or simply overtaken by
other means of communication?
>Regarding your "it's not dead" comment, one doesn't need to be rotting 6
>feet under to be considered dead[1].
When it's up and walking around and talking to you, it's hard to call
it dead. Zombies are unattached Unix processes and otherwise fiction.
Kathy Morgan
> Due to this nature, this means that it is expectable that the group will
> be filled with isolated, one-off posts made by users who only drop by to
> ask for advice on specific problems they want to overcome. This means
> that the group is destined to never become a "success" in the sense
> derived from social networks, but it may be hugely successful in providing
> an useful venue to learn and share valuable technical information on a
> given subject.
If those one-off posts asking for advice received useful answers, or
indeed any answers at all attempting to help the questioner, I would
consider the group to be a success. I use comp.mail.eudora.mac which was
once a busy, thriving group with dozens of posts per week. Now, there
are only a handful (not surprising for orphaned software), but almost
every post asking for assistance gets multiple responses to resolve the
question.
With this Great Downsizing RFD, we are talking about removing
groups where there are either no non-spam posts at all, or just a few
one-off posts which didn't get any responses. People are *not* using
them as a "useful venue to learn and share valuable technical
information on a given subject."
--
Kathy
Rui Maciel
> The lesson was also that some suceeded. As long as there is a garbage
> collection process that pushes the canonical list towards groups that
> are in use that suggests creating new groups should be easy. It is easy
> for any proponent who choses to make it so. Several proponents have
> decided otherwise of their own free will.
Exactly. The risk of creating "garbage" is only as problematic as the
ability to "clean" it. This "Great Downsizing" campaign only demonstrates
that "cleaning" this "garbage" is not a problem. As a consequence, the
risk of creating a dead group is also not a problem. If it dies then just
throw it into the list and kill it in the next cull. Meanwhile, imposing
a Kafkaesque process on every user who wishes to create new newsgroups is
not in the best interests of anyone at all. It's nothing more than
bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.
Rui Maciel
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
> ... considering this "Great Downsizing" campaign, Usenet is
>left with a streamlined way to delete groups and no viable way to create
>new ones. This does nothing to prevent Usenet's decline. Quite the
>opposite, I'm afraid.
The board only manages the newsgroups associated with the Big-8.
The Big-8 is not (the) Usenet (USENET).
Cleaning up the canonical list in the Big-8 will have no
impact whatsoever on alt.*, free.*, or four or five hundred
other hierarchies in (the) Usenet (USENET).
The Big-8 has a method by which new newsgroups have been
created. We're talking to each other in one of them created
using the revised method. The land speed record for creating
a new one under the new system is under two weeks, if I
remember correctly. It was comp.mobile.ipad:
2010-03-23: RESULT: comp.mobile.ipad will be created
2010-03-17: RFD: comp.mobile.ipad LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS
2010-03-12: RFD: comp.mobile.apple.iPad
It's not alt.*, of course. But it seems to me that if
alt.* is all you want, it's already there, just waiting
for you and the next 100,000 folks who would like to
create a newsgroup without asking anyone's advice or
consent.
Marty
--
Member of the Big-8 Management Board (B8MB) <http://www.big-8.org>
Unless otherwise indicated, I speak for myself, not for the Board.
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
> ... I believe a bulk-addition process may exist, but I've never
>seen anybody ask to use it...
People have been discussing the results of the bulk creation of
obvious newsgroups in this thread.
The regular RFD process was used to create the groups--in bulk.
The idea of removing low-traffic groups was also developed at
the same time as the experiment on the bulk creation of new
newsgroups:
2007-10-03: RESULT: bulk creation of "obvious" groups passes
2007-10-02: RESULT: policy for removing extremely-low-traffic unmoderated groups passes
2007-09-28: 3rd RFD: bulk creation of "obvious" groups (LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS)
2007-09-22: 2nd RFD: bulk creation of "obvious" groups (LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS)
2007-09-20: RFD: removing extremely-low-traffic unmoderated groups (LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS)
2007-09-14: RFD: bulk creation of "obvious" groups
http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Nan:2007-10-03-obvious-bulk-result
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
> ... due to the way Usenet has
>been managed ...
There is no Usenet management system.
The Big-8 are a small set of managed hierarchies.
There are hundreds of other hierarchies not
under the control of the Big-8 Management Board:
http://www.magma.ca/~leisen/mlnh/mlnhtables.html
Some are managed and some are not. Some are alive
and some are dead.
Brad Templeton
Martin X. Moleski, SJ <mol...@canisius.edu> wrote:
>It's not alt.*, of course. But it seems to me that if
>alt.* is all you want, it's already there, just waiting
>for you and the next 100,000 folks who would like to
>create a newsgroup without asking anyone's advice or
>consent.
This makes me ask the question, just what is the real
difference between the "big" 8 and alt? Now as somebody who
has been on USENET for over 30 years, and who has created groups and
hierarchies etc. etc., you can rest assured that I am not asking about
the technical difference, or anything printed in the policies of the
Big 8 board or other official differences that people might declare.
Rather, I honestly ask us to examine what the difference is for
users. What differences do users perceive or really experience,
how much do they understand of the difference and how does it help
or hinder them?
There was a time, decades ago, when sending data over modems cost
money and disk space was limited. The idea of an official set of
managed or semi-managed hierarchies allowed a site to decide to
get some hierarchies and not others. Some of the reasons back then
included:
1) They just needed to limit message flow
2) They were scared of what was in alt or other hierarchies
3) They wanted their feed to be work-related and thus might
take comp.* and sci.* but not rec.* or talk.*
#1 and #2 were real purposes. While #3 was commonly cited, it
actually happened quite rarely.
Today #1 and #2 are not so important. The bandwidth and disk
storage needs of text groups is low by today's standards. Sites
do want to treat binaries differently today, that's presumably the
top tuning of feeds we'll see.
Having a managed hierarchy also had some goals, and of course.
But I wonder just how many of them are the same today, or were
ever realized, and which of the new goals are being realized.
For example, you might see people say that users might like
to browse a hierarchy, like they might descend a filesystem
tree, and find newsgroups that way. Ie. if looking for a newsgroup
on Linux they might decide to click on comp, and then comp.os and then
find it. But in reality, I think it's fair to claim that nobody
wants to search that way these days, and Yahoo's tree of web sites
is now gathering dust next to the search box.
I've heard it said that with a cleanly organized hierarchy, users
would not be confused by dead groups, where they might otherwise
go and expect to get answers but find nothing. On a server that
does not include alt, I could see that argument, but don't most servers
include alt and many other hierarchies in their list of what you can
browse? Even if every group in comp.os is alive, when I search for
linux I will see the various comp.os groups but also many alt groups,
dead and alive, and that's in an area like OSs where creation in
comp.* is relatively easy to get done. Search for a group about
a TV show and almost all the answers will be in alt, and they will
be completely unmanaged.
A group seach which occluded alt would serve its users badly, but
it will thus also provide dead groups and spelling mistakes. It
might try to rank the results, and put the most active groups at the top,
but it can do this regardless of hierarhcy.
So are we just left with the idea that "The users will know that comp.*
is actively managed, and trust a group there more?"
I can see a value to this, but frankly it's a minor one.
I do know of a few others. A newgroup message within the big 8 is
more likely to be quickly acted upon at some sites compared to a
newgroup message in alt. This has not stopped there from being a
huge number of widely used newsgroups in alt, far more than there
are big 8 groups, so just how big a difference is this?
So thus the challenge above: What's the difference between the
big 8 and alt to the typical user? I am sure there are things
other people value that I have not listed, so please put them
forward, and tell us how valuable you think they are.
--
Tour Utah and Colorado with my photojournals
http://www.templetons.com/brad/photo/utahco
Rui Maciel
> There is no Usenet management system.
>
> The Big-8 are a small set of managed hierarchies.
>
> There are hundreds of other hierarchies not
> under the control of the Big-8 Management Board:
>
> http://www.magma.ca/~leisen/mlnh/mlnhtables.html
>
> Some are managed and some are not. Some are alive
> and some are dead.
>
> Marty
No one said that there was a Usenet management system. This discussion
refers to the way the big-8 are managed. Culling groups is an act of
management, and so is creating them.
Rui Maciel
Rui Maciel
> In article <iiul7b$5vr$1...@speranza.aioe.org>,
> Rui Maciel <rui.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>The latter constitutes a major problem not because it generates
>>competition but simply due to the fact that, due to the way Usenet has
>>been managed, it has become far easier to develop, install and run
>>custom- tailored applications designed to implement a public means of
>>communication on a private server allocated somewhere in the world than
>>to simply post a small control message to create a newsgroup.
>
> There is no need to do any of that. Simply create a Google Group. You
> don't need any private server or custom-tailored application.
I don't know if you did it intentionally but you just just reiterated the
point that I've made, which is that the way the big-8 handles the
newsgroup creation process forces people to abandon usenet in favour of
other public communication channels.
> Usenet can NEVER beat that unless you go to a free.* or alt.* system of
> management.
In other words, Usenet can beat that if the big-8 reform their group
creation process.
Notice, however, that doing away with this Kafkaesque process to create
groups doesn't mean abandoning all rules and implementing a free-for-all.
> And because those systems of management exist, they prove
> that the problem is NOT caused by the management, but by other things.
The alt.* hierarchy can't be compared with the big-8, for multiple reasons
including how some service providers refuse to carry it.
> Those things happen to be what differentiates Usenet from "the web" --
> group ownership, central repository, etc., and as such are unlikely
> to change.
The "web" alterantives, in terms of user experience and including
established services, are always considerably inferior than the typical
Usenet experience. People don't migrate to "web" alternatives because
they are better, they migrate to them because they don't have any
alterantive.
>>A means of communication doesn't just die on it's own. It's missmanaged
>>to death.
>
> Was gopher mismanaged to death? Archie? WAIS? Or simply overtaken by
> other means of communication?
That would only be a reasonable comparison if web-based forums managed to
be an improvement over what Usenet provides. That, as anyone can tell, is
patently false. There is yet a single web-based forum to be developed
which can match what Usenet has been offering for decades.
>>Regarding your "it's not dead" comment, one doesn't need to be rotting 6
>>feet under to be considered dead[1].
>
> When it's up and walking around and talking to you, it's hard to call
> it dead. Zombies are unattached Unix processes and otherwise fiction.
It appears that you failed to notice the reference that I've made to
functional extinction.
Rui Maciel
Alexander Bartolich
> [...]
> In other words, Usenet can beat that if the big-8 reform their group
> creation process.
>
> Notice, however, that doing away with this Kafkaesque process to create
> groups doesn't mean abandoning all rules and implementing a free-for-all.
What parts of the creation process are Kafkaesque?
What would you do differently?
Please be specific, e.g. by quoting a specific part of the rules, or by
showing an example of a proposal that went wrong.
Rui Maciel
> If those one-off posts asking for advice received useful answers, or
> indeed any answers at all attempting to help the questioner, I would
> consider the group to be a success. I use comp.mail.eudora.mac which was
> once a busy, thriving group with dozens of posts per week. Now, there
> are only a handful (not surprising for orphaned software), but almost
> every post asking for assistance gets multiple responses to resolve the
> question.
>
> With this Great Downsizing RFD, we are talking about removing
> groups where there are either no non-spam posts at all, or just a few
> one-off posts which didn't get any responses. People are *not* using
> them as a "useful venue to learn and share valuable technical
> information on a given subject.
My previous message refered to the need to reform the newsgroup-creating
process in order to make it public-frienly and to streamline it, a change
which should be implemented on par this newsgroup culling process. It
wasn't a criticism targetted at this mass group deletion, which I see as a
positive move.
Rui Maciel
Steve Bonine
> My previous message refered to the need to reform the newsgroup-creating
> process in order to make it public-frienly and to streamline it, a change
> which should be implemented on par this newsgroup culling process. It
> wasn't a criticism targetted at this mass group deletion, which I see as a
> positive move.
OK, let's for a moment assume that the newsgroup-creation process
consisted of sending an email "Please create a group named x.y.z." I
don't think it could be any more streamlined than that. Do you really
think that would be a good thing for the big-8?
I don't think it would make any difference in whether someone who wants
to create a discussion did it on Usenet versus Google or Yahoo. The
technology of Usenet insures that, no matter how much you streamline the
creation process, it will never be as straightforward as creating a new
group at Google or Yahoo. The biggest difference is that in Usenet
there is the step of convincing NSPs to carry the new newsgroup.
There's no way around that, no matter how much you streamline the
"newsgroup-creating process". In fact, a flurry of junk newsgroups
issued using the big-8 PGP key might make news admins even less likely
to add them and hurt the overall process.
I am not convinced that it would result in a net improvement in the
collection of newsgroups in the big-8. We learned, in the "obvious
group" experiment, that having a proponent who is willing to nurture new
newsgroups is an important component to their success. I would expect
similar results if the newsgroup-creation process was made much easier
-- a lot of new newsgroups would be created, but only a very tiny number
would succeed. That tiny number represents cases in which a proponent
would be willing to go through the current procedure.
I think that the current procedure for creating newsgroups in the big-8
is appropriate. There are sufficient hurdles to justify a statement
that the big-8 is still a "managed hierarchy", but not so many to
prevent creation of newsgroups with some chance of success.
The alternative, no pun intended, is alt. If that hierarchy was
thriving and the big-8 was not, I'd be looking for change, but that's
not the case.
Anton Ertl
>I do know of a few others. A newgroup message within the big 8 is
>more likely to be quickly acted upon at some sites compared to a
>newgroup message in alt. This has not stopped there from being a
>huge number of widely used newsgroups in alt, far more than there
>are big 8 groups, so just how big a difference is this?
As a user I have the Big8 groups readily available, whereas only a
subset of alt.* groups are available without me requesting them, and
that's a significant difference. I notice this difference in
particular because I cannot cross-post to groups that my news server
does not know about (which happens now and then on followups to posts
with the exact same Newsgroups: line).
As someone who wants to establish a newsgroup, this would make the
Big8 hierarchy more attractive. A significant part of my potential
users wouldn't have to ask their news provider for the group.
I guess these issues become less important now that Usenet changes to
mostly use few big News servers rather than many small ones, but if it
did not make a difference, nobody would try to establish a new group
in the Big8.
Cultural differences between Big-8 and alt groups might also be among
the differences experienced by users (e.g., I have that impression
that top-posting is more widespread in alt.*).
- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
Doug Freyburger
>
> My previous message refered to the need to reform the newsgroup-creating
> process in order to make it public-frienly and to streamline it, a change
> which should be implemented on par this newsgroup culling process.
The current process is already no harder than creating a web forum and
all of the stuff about advertising to draw traffic is the same.
1) Unsubscribe from news.groups to not have the temptation to make the
process endlessly frustratating. Subscribe to news.announce.newgroups
and news.groups.proposals.
2) Cut-n-paste the template with your topic.
3) Read the discussion in NGP and maybe incorporate some of the
suggestions. Parallel to configuring the software.
4) Call for the LCC by posting one after the minimum timeout period.
5) Call for the vote by posting that request after the minimukm timeout
period.
6) Make sure your NSP carries it.
7) Start posting.
8) Mention the group elsewhere to draw traffic.
9) Ask other users to request that their NSP add it.
10) When it is carried by enough NSPs, done.
The total effort is very close to the same as creating your own web
forum except that on a web forum you run it and are therefore its
moderator as long as you chose to run it moderated.
Doug Freyburger
> Alexander Bartolich wrote:
>
>> It's telling that you did not mention trolls and kooks.
>
> Can you please explain your comment?
The vast majority of former UseNet posters I have corresponded with
report that they left because of the trolls and the kooks. They tried
complaining to their NSP and their complaints got ignored so they left
because of the lack of customer service. They had no interest in
supplying their own infrastructure services to filter out an unending
list of trolls and kooks. They knew of alternatives where their topics
were discussed that blocked trolls and kooks so they went there and
never looked back.
It was as simple as that - Customer service comparisons. It doesn't
matter if a service has no charge, if there is a competitor that offers
better customer service traffic will gradually move there. There are
subscription UseNet services and free ones, subscription web forums and
free ones. They all compete in the sense that they draw from the same
set of posters.
The fact that you did not list trolls and kooks as a problem leads to
the questions - To what extent are you one posting elsewhere under other
handles? - Have you never corresponded with former UseNet posters who
are now on web forums? - Since that is a large fraction of the
discussion about UseNet's problems do you have any idea how UseNet works?
Doug Freyburger
>
> So thus the challenge above: What's the difference between the
> big 8 and alt to the typical user? I am sure there are things
> other people value that I have not listed, so please put them
> forward, and tell us how valuable you think they are.
1) In the past I have used NSPs who only carried the Big-8. These have
generally been work servers. When the Big-8 exists and alt does not
that's a huge difference.
Should I decide to run a hobby server I'd probably only carry the Big-8.
Maybe plus those alt groups I have subscribed to over time maybe not.
2) As a user I can subscribe to NAN so I have the post that lists the
canonical groups. Whenever I have an interest in a topic I can scan the
list for it and expect that the deepest and broadest expertese to be
found anywhere is in the subscribers to that list.
3) Having a canonical list I can subscribe to any group on the list. If
my NSP does not carry it I can ask and they *will* carry it. If they
don't I know it is time to move to a different service. Having a
canonical list nearly any group I try will already be carried.
In alt I have to know a group is supposed to exist to be able to
subscribe to it. Not having any canonical list all I can do is look at
the current hierarchy on my current set of services. I can't know about
the ones not carried so it is not easy for me to ask them to carry one
unless I encountered discussion of it in alt.config.
4) Because the groups are in a hierarchy I can navigate up and down and
make a few guesses. Nearly any subject I look for only takes a few
minutes of navigating the hierarchy and I'll be able to find it even
though I'm searching for a synonymous name. My brain resolves
synonymous names quickly and easily but a search engine does not.
Because alt is not an organized hierarchy my first few guesses might not
work to find the group. Rather than having a high chance of recognizing
a synonym based on the group being well named there's a chance the group
is one I won't find.
Many groups in alt are easy to find because they are well named. Being
well named is a requirement going into the Big-8 list in the first place.