Request For Discussion (RFD): Computer Programming Language: Swift - comp.lang.swift

[Shao Miller]

Hello, all.

I suggest that a comp.lang.swift discussion forum could be useful for
interest in and discussion regarding the "Swift" computer programming
language. Has there already been an RFD for this, to anyone's knowledge?

--
- Shao Miller
Synthetel Corporation
W: https://www.synthetel.com

[Shao Miller]

On 3/19/2016 20:43, Peter J Ross wrote:
>
> In news.groups.proposals on Wed, 16 Mar 2016 23:14:17 CST, Shao Miller

> wrote:
>
>> Hello, all.
>>
>> I suggest that a comp.lang.swift discussion forum could be useful for
>> interest in and discussion regarding the "Swift" computer programming
>> language.
>

> What makes you think it would be useful? Is the topic already being
> discussed on Usenet? Do the people who are already discussing the
> topic want a new newsgroup?
>

I've noticed that there are a large number of people programming in the
Swift language. Since at least one search-engine seems to examine
Usenet posts, I thought a comp.lang.swift news-group could be a useful
forum.

I do not know if Swift programmers are already discussing the language
in another news-group.

>> Has there already been an RFD for this, to anyone's knowledge?
>

> Definitely not in the last 15 years. :-)
>

Thank you. :)

> If I were you, I'd try to establish discussion of Swift in newsgroups
> where it's already an acceptable topic before starting the comp[l]icated
> process of trying to create a new newsgroup for it.

Thank you for your suggestion, Mr. Ross.

--
- Shao Miller
Synthetel Corporation
W: https://www.synthetel.com

--
"Thank you for the kind words; those are the kind of words I like to hear.

Cheerily," -- Richard Harter

[Shao Miller]

On 3/25/2016 05:46, Howard S Shubs wrote:

> On 3/24/2016 20:00, Shao Miller wrote:
>> On 3/19/2016 20:43, Peter J Ross wrote:
>>> In news.groups.proposals on Wed, 16 Mar 2016 23:14:17 CST, Shao Miller
>>> wrote:
>>>

>>>> [...]

>>>>
>>>> I suggest that a comp.lang.swift discussion forum could be useful for
>>>> interest in and discussion regarding the "Swift" computer programming
>>>> language.
>>>
>>> What makes you think it would be useful? Is the topic already being
>>> discussed on Usenet? Do the people who are already discussing the
>>> topic want a new newsgroup?
>>>

>> [...]

>>
>> I do not know if Swift programmers are already discussing the language
>> in another news-group.
>

> Then you haven't done your due diligence. You need to know this first. This
> isn't a matter of "build it and they will come." This is a matter of they're
> already here, they're annoyed with the non-Swift discussion in the existing
> newsgroup, and want a new newsgroup of their own. If that's not the case,
> creating a newsgroup is a waste of everyone's time.
>
> Find out where Swift is being discussed. It's likely not in a USENET
> newsgroup, but in a web forum some place. Join that web forum and enjoy.
>

Thank you for your response, Mr. Shubs.

I have been trying to pay attention to this[1] resource and to this[2]
resource. Given that context, could you please help me to better
understand your objection to the Costnerian "if you build it, they will
come" strategy? It's now 2016; is there a heavy burden on human,
computing and/or network resources that makes carrying another
news-group as careful a consideration as it might have been in times
gone by? Or perhaps there are other reasons you wouldn't mind sharing?

For additional context, I thought I'd start at the very beginning: With
informal discussion and a quick check if there had been such a proposal
before. If I haven't done my due diligence, perhaps it's because I
haven't yet approached an actual RFD. I thought it civil to respond to
Mr. Ross' questions, however.

Since Usenet seems like a rather original medium, I thought it might be
nice for it to be host to such discussion, as opposed to a fragmentation
across web-fora, mailing-lists, etc. I believe the Swift language is
still in its relative youth, so a Usenet news-group could possibly
become established as the best discussion-forum.

If you've read messages like mine a thousand times before, I welcome
your pointing me to additional resources of relevance. As a new-comer
to the proposal of new news-groups, I thank you again for your conversation.

[1]
http://www.big-8.org/articles/h/o/w/How_to_Create_a_New_Big-8_Newsgroup.html
[2]
http://www.big-8.org/articles/c/o/n/Content_and_Format_of_a_Request_for_Discussion_%28RFD%29.html

[David E. Ross]

If you want a newsgroup to be createds in the comp. hierarchy, you must
follow the process described at
<http://www.big-8.org/articles/h/o/w/How_to_Create_a_New_Big-8_Newsgroup.html>.
You will see that the first step would be to get a few other
individuals to reply in this thread that they too would use such a new
newsgroup.

--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

Anything I post in this newsgroup is my personal
opinion and does not reflect the official position
of the Big8-Usenet Board.

[Mark Kramer]

In article <nd3bhh$roj$1...@dont-email.me>,

Shao Miller <sha0....@synthetel.com> wrote:
>Given that context, could you please help me to better
>understand your objection to the Costnerian "if you build it, they will
>come" strategy?

Because it doesn't work. Usenet has no advertising budget. When you google
"swift discussion" you won't find Usenet. Creating a group for a specific
topic here will not magically draw users from other media. If they aren't
here, now, using Usenet, they won't bother coming here.

>It's now 2016; is there a heavy burden on human,
>computing and/or network resources that makes carrying another
>news-group as careful a consideration as it might have been in times
>gone by?

Oh, my. What a can of worms you open with that question. Many of us have
pointed this out to TPTB, but having a nice, clean Usenet is a goal that
many have just because cleanliness is next to Godliness. Having empty
newsgroups is just, well, untidy. It confuses people who do come here
looking for discussion on some topic when they ask a question but get
no response.

Now, that is not to say that some groups have continued to operate
well. It is just that the chances of success are much greater when you
start with an existing user base than when you create a completely new
place with nobody around to talk about the topic.

>Since Usenet seems like a rather original medium, I thought it might be
>nice for it to be host to such discussion, as opposed to a fragmentation
>across web-fora, mailing-lists, etc.

Yes, Usenet is the original. We can think it might be nice if discussion
were here, but we cannot force people to do that. They will go where
they are comfortable. They are most comfortable today in a sanitized,
controlled discussion environment, and that requires a centralized
forum. Not Usenet. And if they aren't already more comfortable in a
controlled environment, they will quickly become so when they read their
first troll or flame war. Or wonder why the spammers cannot be stopped.

Personally, I no longer come to Usenet looking for answers to technical
questions. There are just too many websites with the answers already
there, questions already answered, and instant gratification, to want to
wait for someone to provide a potential answer a couple of days after I
need it. A very large percentage of the time it will be the wrong answer,
and we'll waste a few days debating what the right one actually is,
IF there is anyone around who knows the right one. Sorry, but that's
how it is now.

[Shao Miller]

On 3/26/2016 16:36, David E. Ross wrote:
> If you want a newsgroup to be createds in the comp. hierarchy, you must
> follow the process described at
> <http://www.big-8.org/articles/h/o/w/How_to_Create_a_New_Big-8_Newsgroup.html>.
> You will see that the first step would be to get a few other
> individuals to reply in this thread that they too would use such a new
> newsgroup.
>

Thank you for your response.

You've shared a link that was present near the bottom of the post you
have replied to.

Can you please direct me to the text on that web-page that suggests the
first step is getting a few other individuals to state that they would
use the new news-group? I'm having some difficulty locating it.

Take care.

--
- Shao Miller

[Shao Miller]

On 3/28/2016 17:39, Mark Kramer wrote:
> In article <nd3bhh$roj$1...@dont-email.me>,
> Shao Miller <sha0....@synthetel.com> wrote:
>> Given that context, could you please help me to better
>> understand your objection to the Costnerian "if you build it, they will
>> come" strategy?
>
> Because it doesn't work. Usenet has no advertising budget. When you google
> "swift discussion" you won't find Usenet. Creating a group for a specific
> topic here will not magically draw users from other media. If they aren't
> here, now, using Usenet, they won't bother coming here.
>

Thank you for your response.

I have been considering going to other fora and raising awareness about
the new Usenet news-group, if it's successfully created. That is, using
my own advertising budget.

>> It's now 2016; is there a heavy burden on human,
>> computing and/or network resources that makes carrying another
>> news-group as careful a consideration as it might have been in times
>> gone by?
>
> Oh, my. What a can of worms you open with that question. Many of us have
> pointed this out to TPTB, but having a nice, clean Usenet is a goal that
> many have just because cleanliness is next to Godliness. Having empty
> newsgroups is just, well, untidy. It confuses people who do come here
> looking for discussion on some topic when they ask a question but get
> no response.
>
> Now, that is not to say that some groups have continued to operate
> well. It is just that the chances of success are much greater when you
> start with an existing user base than when you create a completely new
> place with nobody around to talk about the topic.
>

Ah yes, it'd be nice to avoid confusing people. This makes sense.

It seems like a testing phase might be useful. It's now 2016, so I'm
sure that's been suggested before. Do you happen to recall what some
objections to a testing phase might have been?

>> Since Usenet seems like a rather original medium, I thought it might be
>> nice for it to be host to such discussion, as opposed to a fragmentation
>> across web-fora, mailing-lists, etc.
>
> Yes, Usenet is the original. We can think it might be nice if discussion
> were here, but we cannot force people to do that. They will go where
> they are comfortable. They are most comfortable today in a sanitized,
> controlled discussion environment, and that requires a centralized
> forum. Not Usenet. And if they aren't already more comfortable in a
> controlled environment, they will quickly become so when they read their
> first troll or flame war. Or wonder why the spammers cannot be stopped.
>
> Personally, I no longer come to Usenet looking for answers to technical
> questions. There are just too many websites with the answers already
> there, questions already answered, and instant gratification, to want to
> wait for someone to provide a potential answer a couple of days after I
> need it. A very large percentage of the time it will be the wrong answer,
> and we'll waste a few days debating what the right one actually is,
> IF there is anyone around who knows the right one. Sorry, but that's
> how it is now.
>

My Usenet participation does not go as far back as the 1990s. This
might be useful context for my optimism. :)

[dvus]

Oh, you dirty Usenet traitor! But, you're right. Ask someone how to get
info on some particular subject and their answer is invariably "Google
is your friend". It's built right into the social fabric. A relative
asked me a question about something and I started to tell them about
discussion on Usenet but I was drowned out by several people who said "I
Googled it and here's your info.". I just shut my mouth and went on eating.

--
dvus

[David E. Ross]

Read more carefully the paragraph at
<http://www.big-8.org/articles/h/o/w/How_to_Create_a_New_Big-8_Newsgroup.html#Informal_Discussion>.

[Shao Miller]

On 3/29/2016 20:02, David E. Ross wrote:

> On 3/29/2016 12:01, Shao Miller wrote:
>> On 3/26/2016 16:36, David E. Ross wrote:
>>>
>>> You will see that the first step would be to get a few other
>>> individuals to reply in this thread that they too would use such a new
>>> newsgroup.
>

> Read more carefully the paragraph at
> <http://www.big-8.org/articles/h/o/w/How_to_Create_a_New_Big-8_Newsgroup.html#Informal_Discussion>.

Thank you. Is this the text that you are referring to as being visible
as the first step?:

Your helpful link[3] includes:
> The proponent may choose to conduct an interest poll during the informal
> discussion phase. See the notes on Traffic Analysis for further information.

[3]
http://www.big-8.org/articles/h/o/w/How_to_Create_a_New_Big-8_Newsgroup.html#Informal_Discussion

--
- Shao Miller

[David E. Ross]

Yes.

[Mark Kramer]

In article <ndcqr8$gu2$1...@dont-email.me>,

Shao Miller <sha0....@synthetel.com> wrote:
>I have been considering going to other fora and raising awareness about
>the new Usenet news-group, if it's successfully created. That is, using
>my own advertising budget.

It doesn't work. People who don't have Usenet access now aren't going
to spend time getting Usenet access for just one group. Certainly not
when they can go to an Apple website where the answers already exist.
First you have to find a Usenet server that will allow you to read and
post. Then you have to get software.

If you're going to depend on Google Groups (does that still even
exist? I don't know; don't care. It was a problem for real Usenet from
day 1.) to get newsgroup access, why not just set up a web group to
begin with? If you do go through Google, then you will confuse a lot
more people. They'll all wonder why this Group is not as nice as other
groups they use, and trying to explain to them that it is a window into
Usenet will just baffle them.

>> Now, that is not to say that some groups have continued to operate
>> well. It is just that the chances of success are much greater when you
>> start with an existing user base than when you create a completely new
>> place with nobody around to talk about the topic.
>>
>
>Ah yes, it'd be nice to avoid confusing people. This makes sense.

I was talking about the reasons some people use. I don't find it
particularly confusing when I go to a newgroup where there are no messages
and don't get an answer when I ask a question. It's kinda obvious that
nobody is there, I think, if nobody has said anything in a long time.

>It seems like a testing phase might be useful. It's now 2016, so I'm
>sure that's been suggested before. Do you happen to recall what some
>objections to a testing phase might have been?

There is no "testing phase" in the Usenet software. It's either create
the group do, or create the group do not. I don't know what "2016" has
to do with anything. RFC5537 took, according to the acknowledgements,
12 years to write and is now 7 years old. I remember wasting a very large
amount of time on that process, and I'm frankly amazed that it has gotten
out of draft status. It seemed hopeless at the time. And I have no idea
if any of the Usenet software has been updated to follow it. The last
Usenet "improvement" I know of was Usenet II, and that leaked messages
so bad that it was really not any different.

In other words, if the group is created, it takes a removal process to
get rid of it. Since honoring rmgroups is less common than honoring
newgroup control messages, you'll be left with an extremely spotty
coverage and islands of discussion. Of course, since newgroup messages
are not automatically obeyed, you'll at best have spotty coverage to start
with. In fact, it is possible to wind up with the group on a server that
doesn't exchange messages for that group with anyone else, so someone
could post a question and it would never be read by anyone. Once the
rmgroup goes out, that possibility is vastly greater.

That is not to say that this group cannot possibly be successful, but
to be so it would likely have to be moderated, and the chances then
are still remote.

>My Usenet participation does not go as far back as the 1990s. This
>might be useful context for my optimism. :)

It should be a context for less optimism. You've only seen it since
the Eternal September disaster, and after Green Cards. Before was
paradise. Too many apples have been eaten by too many Eves now.

[David E. Ross]

On 3/31/2016 11:36 AM, Mark Kramer wrote [in part]:
> It doesn't work. People who don't have Usenet access now aren't going
> to spend time getting Usenet access for just one group. Certainly not
> when they can go to an Apple website where the answers already exist.
> First you have to find a Usenet server that will allow you to read and
> post. Then you have to get software.

There are free newsgroup servers. If you have a good E-mail
application, subscribing to one of them is not difficult. Furthermore,
anyone interested in a computer programming language should be somewhat
adept at handling the subscribing process. I see that you still used
the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) to express your opinion.

> If you're going to depend on Google Groups (does that still even
> exist? I don't know; don't care. It was a problem for real Usenet from
> day 1.)

Yes, Google Groups may have changed over the years; but it is still
active. Much of the exchanges relating to the development of
Mozilla-based applications use Google Groups as well as NNTP and E-mail
listservs.

> RFC5537 took, according to the acknowledgements,
> 12 years to write and is now 7 years old. I remember wasting a very large
> amount of time on that process, and I'm frankly amazed that it has gotten
> out of draft status. It seemed hopeless at the time. And I have no idea
> if any of the Usenet software has been updated to follow it. The last
> Usenet "improvement" I know of was Usenet II, and that leaked messages
> so bad that it was really not any different.

Old does not equal obsolete. RFC 5532 (Internet Message Format) is
older than RFC 5536 (Netnews Article Format) and RFC 5537 (Netnews
Architecture and Protocols) by more than a year. Yet RFC 5532 is still
the specification for addressing E-mail messages.

[Mark Kramer]

In article <ndjo5d$611$1...@news.albasani.net>,

David E. Ross <nob...@nowhere.invalid> wrote:
>On 3/31/2016 11:36 AM, Mark Kramer wrote [in part]:
>> It doesn't work. People who don't have Usenet access now aren't going
>> to spend time getting Usenet access for just one group. Certainly not
>> when they can go to an Apple website where the answers already exist.
>> First you have to find a Usenet server that will allow you to read and
>> post. Then you have to get software.
>
>There are free newsgroup servers. If you have a good E-mail
>application, subscribing to one of them is not difficult.

News is not email. And while there are many free servers, I have found
that most of them do not allow posting. You can read all you want but
posting is a problem. Even though you might find a free posting server,
that server will also need to honor newgourp control messages. If you
look carefully, you'll note along with using an NNTP client, I'm also
posting through the news.killfile.org server because my local one does
not have news.groups.proposals.

What I remember is that it took a lot of work tracking down a suitable
server just for the automated news feed I run, after the server I had
been using was turned off. And that was for read-only, and I was working
off a list someone else was keeping of free Usenet servers.

I'm sure you have a list of postable servers if you have an interest in
Usenet. If you're not here already, you probably won't. And you probably
won't want to waste time figuring out how to configure your newsreader,
I mean email program, to access one of them because you'll prefer to
have instant gratification on a web-based forum that doesn't have trolls
and spam.

>I see that you still used
>the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) to express your opinion.

So? Actually, no, I didn't. I used a news client that uses that protocol.
I use "vi" to express my opinion.

>Old does not equal obsolete.

I did not say it was. I was responding to the statement that "it is
2016", as if being 2016 meant all of this should be common and simple
today. The fact that the last standard was published in 2009 and didn't
seem to change much of anything is a clue that progress has stagnated in
Usenet-land. And none of that matters because people aren't more Usenet
savvy in 2016 than they were in 2000; they're probably less. None of
the advice about why and how groups are created from a sociological
viewpoint has changed, even if technology is "2016" and 'cmsg' is now
official obsolete.

[Tim Skirvin]

Shao Miller <sha0....@synthetel.com> writes:

> I suggest that a comp.lang.swift discussion forum could be useful for
> interest in and discussion regarding the "Swift" computer programming
> language.

This sounds like a good idea.

- Tim Skirvin (tski...@killfile.org)
--
http://wiki.killfile.org/ Skirv's Homepage <FISH>< <*>
http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/faqs/ Skirv's FAQs

[Theo Markettos]

Tim Skirvin <tski...@killfile.org> wrote:
> Shao Miller <sha0....@synthetel.com> writes:
>
> > I suggest that a comp.lang.swift discussion forum could be useful for
> > interest in and discussion regarding the "Swift" computer programming
> > language.
>
> This sounds like a good idea.

I would subscribe to such a group, though be somewhat less likely to post.

Theo