DRAFT proposal to restructure news.groups
Thomas Cuny
Please send comments to Thomas Cuny t...@mcs.com or
post to news.groups .
DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to restructure
news.groups
by doing the following:
remove news.groups
create news.groups.creation.status
create news.groups.creation.misc
create news.groups.create.other
create news.groups.create.comp
create news.groups.create.misc
create news.groups.create.news
create news.groups.create.rec
create news.groups.create.sci
create news.groups.create.soc
create news.groups.create.talk
Rationale:
The group news.groups is a mess. It is infested with fame wars and other
garbage. Persons wishing to participate in the news group creation process
are discouraged by the news.groups situation. I propose restructuring
news.groups to:
1) allow people to follow the news group creation proceess without being
harassed by flame wars (news.groups.creation.status)
2) allow people to participate in the news group creation process
while experiencing a minimum of flaming (news.groups.create.*)
3) allow people to flame and complain to their hearts content without
interfering with the news group creation process
(news.groups.creation.misc)
Name: news.groups.creation.status
Moderated: yes
Moderator: David C. Lawrence
Rationale:
The group news.announce.newgroups has more information than most people
need or want to track the new group creation process.
This news group is needed for tracking the status of the news group
Creation process.
Charter:
This news group is for tracking the status of the news group creation
process. It provides the minimum information needed to follow the
news group creation process.
Description:
Articles to be posted to news.groups.creation.status
RFD original and revised
CFV first and second
VOTE results (without list of voters)
"Current Status of Usenet Newsgroup Proposals"
Name: news.groups.creation.misc
Moderated: yes :-)
Moderator: yourself with the use of KILL files or other appropriate
means
Rationale:
A newsland tavern is needed where everyone talks and no one listens.
The flamewars, trash, and rubish that formerly resided in news.groups
needs a place to call its own. Well, this is it.
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
A place is needed to discuss the group creation process ,propose
changes to that process and rectify malfunctions of that process.
Charter:
This is the meta-discussion group about the group creation process.
This is the place to discuss the group creation process ,propose
changes to that process and rectify malfunctions of that process.
Description:
Appropriate subjects are (but not limited to):
UVV status
voting fraud complaints
"How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup"
why people vote NO
Inappropriate subjects are (but not limited to):
Personal: help test my elm filter
Idaho Militia & right wing activism
Attempt to Censor Misc.Activism.Militia Newsgroup
JOBS IN JAPAN - 36K - NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED
US CONGRESS: LICK MY BIG HAIRY BALLS
EDDIE BBS!!!
Communications Decency Act of 1995
Seek Info Regarding Go Karting
Name: news.groups.create.*
Rationale:
The group "news.groups" needed to be broken into more manageable chunks.
A place needs to be created free of the flame wars and babble that
infest news.groups for people to discuss the creation of new groups.
Charter:
The function of news.group.create.* is to enable interested parties
to take part in (or follow) discussions about news groups they
normally follow or would like to use if created. Most Usenet users
apparently read a fairly small range of groups so their interest
in changes is only likely to be engaged occasionally. The naming
of this group follows the structure of the Big-7 hierarchy so that
people will be able to easily find where to read and post articles
on their interests.
Name: news.groups.create.other
Moderated: no
Moderator: -
Description:
Debate about RFD and CFV for groups that are not large or
busy enough to have their own place in news.groups.create.*
Debate about the creation of new hierarchies.
(If news.admin.hierarchy is not created)
Name: news.groups.create.comp
Moderated: no
Moderator: -
Description:
Debate about RFD and CFV for groups in comp hierarchy
Name: news.groups.create.misc
Moderated: no
Moderator: -
Description:
Debate about RFD and CFV for groups in misc hierarchy
Name: news.groups.create.news
Moderated: no
Moderator: -
Description:
Debate about RFD and CFV for groups in news hierarchy
Name: news.groups.create.rec
Moderated: no
Moderator: -
Description:
Debate about RFD and CFV for groups in rec hierarchy
Name: news.groups.create.sci
Moderated: no
Moderator: -
Description:
Debate about RFD and CFV for groups in sci hierarchy
Name: news.groups.create.soc
Moderated: no
Moderator: -
Description:
Debate about RFD and CFV for groups in soc hierarchy
Name: news.groups.create.talk
Moderated: no
Moderator: -
Description:
Debate about RFD and CFV for groups in talk hierarchy
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Effect of proposed changes:
Before After
news.admin.hierarchies news.admin.hierarchies
news.admin.misc news.admin.misc
news.admin.net-abuse.announce news.admin.net-abuse.announce
news.admin.net-abuse.misc news.admin.net-abuse.misc
news.admin.technical news.admin.technical
news.announce.conferences news.announce.conferences
news.announce.important news.announce.important
news.announce.newgroups news.announce.newgroups
news.announce.newusers news.announce.newusers
news.answers news.answers
news.groups
news.groups.create.other
news.groups.create.comp
news.groups.create.news
news.groups.create.misc
news.groups.create.rec
news.groups.create.soc
news.groups.create.talk
news.groups.create.sci
news.groups.creation.misc
news.groups.creation.status M
news.groups.questions news.groups.questions
news.groups.reviews news.groups.reviews
news.lists news.lists
news.lists.ps-maps news.lists.ps-maps
news.misc news.misc
news.newusers.questions news.newusers.questions
news.nstn.ns.ca news.nstn.ns.ca
news.software.anu-news news.software.anu-news
news.software.b news.software.b
news.software.nn news.software.nn
news.software.nntp news.software.nntp
news.software.readers news.software.readers
news.sysadmin news.sysadmin
news.test news.test
news.software news.software
--
t...@mcs.com
Andrew Toppan
: Articles to be posted to news.groups.creation.status
: RFD original and revised
: CFV first and second
: VOTE results (without list of voters)
: "Current Status of Usenet Newsgroup Proposals"
This looks like darn near everything that goes to n.a.newgroups now.
Why the result without the voters? The full result would still
have to be posted to n.a.n. As it is now people can quickly see the
result from the subject line and/or the first few lines of the
article. They can then ignore the list of voters if they choose.
--
Andrew Toppan --- el...@wpi.edu --- http://www.wpi.edu/~elmer/
Railroads, Ships and Aircraft Homepage, Tom Clancy FAQ Archive
lee s. bumgarner
> DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT
> Please send comments to Thomas Cuny t...@mcs.com or
> post to news.groups .
> DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT
>
<snip>
> Rationale:
> The group news.groups is a mess. It is infested with fame wars and other
> garbage. Persons wishing to participate in the news group creation process
> are discouraged by the news.groups situation. I propose restructuring
> news.groups to:
> 1) allow people to follow the news group creation proceess without being
> harassed by flame wars (news.groups.creation.status)
> 2) allow people to participate in the news group creation process
> while experiencing a minimum of flaming (news.groups.create.*)
> 3) allow people to flame and complain to their hearts content without
> interfering with the news group creation process
> (news.groups.creation.misc)
Uhhhhh....Although I agree *completely* that news.groups needs to be reformed,
I think we need to figger out if we want to reorganize by way o type of
group or that of the system of creation, ie PreRFD, RFD, PostRFD.
Once we get that out of the way, we should go forward with reform.
-l
---"Don't knock on Britian, if it weren't for them, you'd be speaking Spanish."
* Great Renaming FAQ: http://media2.jmu.edu/users/leebumgarner/gr.html *
Thomas Cuny
Timothy R Prodin <tpr...@cadcam.pms.ford.com> wrote:
>In article <3lfdg6$j...@mercury.mcs.com>, Thomas Cuny <t...@MCS.COM> wrote:
>
>>This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to restructure
create news.groups.create.humanities
Um.... what about proposals that are in conflict about which first
level to go in, such as the museum group? Is is sci, humanities
or misc? Where would that discussion take place. Or would it
be crossposted to all three?
RESPONSE:
I have updated the RFD to show that such discussion should
take place in news.groups.create.other.
There is also a followup about news.groups.creation.status being
a copy of news.announce.newgroups content. I also raise that
concern.
RESPONSE:
news.groups.creation.status is a restricted subset of
news.announce.newgroups. The name news.groups.creation.status
was selected to make it easy to find in addition to
being very descriptive as to its contents.
One other question. Why creation and then create? I think it
should be one or the other.
RESPONSE:
The news.groups.create.* follows the Big-7 hierarchy
naming convention to make it easy for people to find
where to post new group creation discussions.
The news.groups.creation.* was named to avoid loosing
.status and .misc in the clutter of all the Big-7 names,
other, and whatever new hierarchies are created.
--
t...@mcs.com
Daniel Hartung
>DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT
>Please send comments to Thomas Cuny t...@mcs.com or
>post to news.groups .
>DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT
>
This is nicely thought out, though completely useless and poorly
timed. Sorry.
>Rationale:
>The group news.groups is a mess. It is infested with fame wars and other
>garbage. Persons wishing to participate in the news group creation process
>are discouraged by the news.groups situation. I propose restructuring
>news.groups to:
>1) allow people to follow the news group creation proceess without being
> harassed by flame wars (news.groups.creation.status)
>2) allow people to participate in the news group creation process
> while experiencing a minimum of flaming (news.groups.create.*)
>3) allow people to flame and complain to their hearts content without
> interfering with the news group creation process
> (news.groups.creation.misc)
Save for this last part, which really should be what I've semi-
seriously proposed as talk.politics.usenet, your main thrust
is to separate flames from some mythical flame-free "newsgroup
creation process".
As this is pretty nigh impossible, this proposal is doomed
to failure, defined as not solving the problem it set out to.
--
Daniel A. Hartung | Support the new Arts/Humanities hierarchy!
dhar...@mcs.com |
dhar...@chinet.chinet.com | Look for the "humanities.misc" CFV
http://www.mcs.net/~dhartung/ | in news.announce.newgroups
Bruce Baugh
:This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to restructure
: news.groups
:by doing the following:
Two things.
1) It won't work. People will crosspost. They _will_ crosspost. It's
one of the most sacred rights of Usenet, after all. :-)
2) Even though news.groups _is_ a mess in some ways, its existence
as a single group serves an important function. It's in the course
of discussing/arguing proposals that principles get established.
This is the way anarchies develop - by cases. What's said about
soc.support.zoophilia does have implications for
misc.activism.militia, which in turn has implications for
news.admin.high-council. The reorganization of the trading cards
hierarchy sets precedents which those reorganizing the Pascal
hierarchy should know aobut. And so forth and so on.
Splitting news.groups guarantees only that the wheel will get
reinvented lots more times.
bruceab@teleport.com___________http://www.teleport.com/~bruceab/
List Manager, Christlib, for Christian and libertarian concerns
Preview S.M. Stirling's forthcoming novel DRAKON at
http://www.teleport.com/~bruceab/drakon.hmtl
Finger me for PGP 2.6.2 key. "Proclaim liberty throughout the land."
Thomas Cuny
>Thomas Cuny <t...@MCS.COM> wrote:
>
>This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to restructure
> news.groups
This is nicely thought out, though completely useless and poorly
timed. Sorry.
>Rationale:
>The group news.groups is a mess. It is infested with fame wars and other
>garbage. Persons wishing to participate in the news group creation process
>are discouraged by the news.groups situation. I propose restructuring
>news.groups to:
>3) allow people to flame and complain to their hearts content without
> interfering with the news group creation process
> (news.groups.creation.misc)
Save for this last part, which really should be what I've semi-
seriously proposed as talk.politics.usenet, your main thrust
is to separate flames from some mythical flame-free "newsgroup
creation process".
As this is pretty nigh impossible, this proposal is doomed
to failure, defined as not solving the problem it set out to.
RESPONSE:
news.groups.creation.status will be absolutely noise free
and absolutely flame free. This is the group that most
people will be reading.
--
t...@mcs.com
Thomas Cuny
Bruce Baugh <bru...@teleport.com> wrote:
>In article <3lfdg6$j...@Mercury.mcs.com>, t...@MCS.COM (Thomas Cuny) wrote:
>
>: news.groups
Two things.
1) It won't work. People will crosspost. They _will_ crosspost. It's
one of the most sacred rights of Usenet, after all. :-)
2) Even though news.groups _is_ a mess in some ways, its existence
as a single group serves an important function. It's in the course
of discussing/arguing proposals that principles get established.
This is the way anarchies develop - by cases. What's said about
soc.support.zoophilia does have implications for
misc.activism.militia, which in turn has implications for
news.admin.high-council. The reorganization of the trading cards
hierarchy sets precedents which those reorganizing the Pascal
hierarchy should know aobut. And so forth and so on.
Splitting news.groups guarantees only that the wheel will get
reinvented lots more times.
RESPONSE:
Those people who know how to design and construct wheels
should embody their knowledge in FAQs and periodically
post them to news.groups.creation.misc and
news.groups.create.*
--
t...@mcs.com
Ian Kluft
meaning no mentor has claimed it. If, out of 40 mentors, you couldn't find
anyone to help, maybe that should tell you something. I know that you were
strongly advised against it when you first brought it up.
My primary response is "Please don't do this." Really. If you won't listen
to that (but I hope you will) there is more direct response below.
There are times that news.groups is hard to follow because one proposal or
another blows up into a flame war. Any given flame war in any of the
proposed split groups will be overwhelming in that group too. This won't
contain them.
However, a threaded newsreader will work and already does... try nn or trn.
And they solve a lot more problems than these.
This proposal would fracture the newsgroup creation discussions to the point
that it might become impossible to learn from past errors and/or tap
existing experience. That possibility is should be of grave concern to
most readers - please take it seriously. Also, as the UseNet Group Mentors
can tell you, most proposals start where the proponent wants a specific
subject but has no idea what the hierarchies are or why. This arrangement
will not help the proponents at all if it splits them by hierarchies they
don't understand in the first place.
Anyway, if my arguments are completely lost in some people's eagerness to
move this forward, I will suggest some changes... If you don't accept my
request to stop the proposal, then please take these suggestions very
seriously because this proposal is badly flawed as it is.
Note for Thomas: when you reply to articles, make sure to include a ">"
before each line in the sections that other people wrote. It's very hard to
read your responses that include verbatim text that someone else wrote and
then a line "RESPONSE" followed by your own text. (You should have read
about this in news.announce.newusers... are you really ready to propose a
reorganization of news.groups if you haven't seen that yet?)
t...@MCS.COM (Thomas Cuny) writes:
>This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) to restructure
> news.groups
>by doing the following:
I've added moderated/unmoderated markings in brackets [] which should be
included in any newsgroup proposal. Though you may not need to add them
here because my next suggestion significantly changes the list.
> remove news.groups [replaced by news.groups.creation.misc or whatever]
> create news.groups.creation.status [moderated]
> create news.groups.creation.misc [unmoderated]
> create news.groups.create.other [unmoderated]
> create news.groups.create.comp [unmoderated]
> create news.groups.create.misc [unmoderated]
> create news.groups.create.news [unmoderated]
> create news.groups.create.rec [unmoderated]
> create news.groups.create.sci [unmoderated]
> create news.groups.create.soc [unmoderated]
> create news.groups.create.talk [unmoderated]
This idea of "creation" and "create" is unreadable. A newsgroup name has
to convey enough sense of the purpose of the group without requiring
reading the charter such that it can avoid any obvious confusion. This
plan doesn't do that.
If you must go ahead with this proposal, something like this would be a
slightly better division of the discussions, between the various phases of
the discussion instead of the hierarchies:
news.groups.proposals (unmoderated)
news.groups.rfd (unmoderated)
news.groups.cfv (unmoderated)
news.groups.misc (unmoderated, replaces news.groups)
...and that's it. 4 newsgroups: three for phases of the proposals and one
misc group for a catch-all. Ideas would be initiated in the proposals group.
RFD's in news.announce.newgroups would Followup-To the rfd discussion group.
CFVs in news.announce.newgroups would Followup-To the CFV discussion group.
Results in news.announce.newgroups would Followup-To the misc group, or
a results group could be added to the proposal, though I think those would
usually be short enough to fit in the misc group.
Status reports do not happen often enough to warrant a newsgroup of their
own. The .misc group would handle them just fine. And
news.announce.newgroups does fine for the RFDs, CFVs, and results already
without need for change. So there are no moderated groups in this
suggestion.
One more comment about results...
>Name: news.groups.creation.status
>Moderated: yes
>Moderator: David C. Lawrence
[...]
> Articles to be posted to news.groups.creation.status
> RFD original and revised
> CFV first and second
> VOTE results (without list of voters)
> "Current Status of Usenet Newsgroup Proposals"
Repeating the earlier point, this group is unnecessary because it's a twin
of news.announce.newgroups. We definitely want to avoid twin newsgroups.
No matter what you do with results in your proposal, there should never be
an attempt to change them to "(without list of voters)". There is a very
plain reason for this... The voting details are included so that anyone
on UseNet can check the results. We have no "UseNet Vote Auditors", and if
we did I doubt anyone would trust them (some people will distrust anything
they are not a member of... conspiracy theories are already plentiful as it
is), so the results must be full disclosures for all to see. Anyone who
questions the voting results can become a self-appointed auditor and check
for themselves instead of screaming about it. This is one significant basis
for the trust sysadmins have in voting results... If you post all the
results and there are no significant objections due to voting irregularities
in the following 5 days, then there is reason to be confident that the vote
accurately indicated sufficient interest in the subject to create the group.
I still would prefer to table the whole proposal. But I made these
suggestions so that if (God forbid) this passes, at least it might be
something we could live with.
Thomas Cuny
Ian Kluft <ikl...@oes.amdahl.com> wrote:
>I still would prefer to table the whole proposal. But I made these
>suggestions so that if (God forbid) this passes, at least it might be
>something we could live with.
RESPONSE:
Please write an RFD that you can live with.
news.groups is dead meat.
--
t...@mcs.com
Christopher B. Stone
>...soc.support.zoophilia does have implications for
>misc.activism.militia, which in turn has implications for
>news.admin.high-council. The reorganization of the trading cards
>hierarchy sets precedents which those reorganizing the Pascal
>hierarchy should know aobut. And so forth and so on.
>
>Splitting news.groups guarantees only that the wheel will get
>reinvented lots more times.
I agree entirely with the above, and I'm unconvinced about the need to
split news.groups. True, news.groups sees a lot of traffic. However, at
any given moment, I follow only about a third of the active threads in
news.groups, and I therefore find the volume wholly manageable.
Someone who reads all the threads in news.groups is bound to chime in
that it is impossible to read all the articles; but splitting news.groups
won't improve the situation. If one wants to read all the threads in
news.groups, presumably one will also read ALL the threads in
news.groups.comp, ALL the threads in news.groups.news, ALL the threads in
news.groups.soc, and so forth. In the end, this does not save any time.
Arguably, it *costs* time. After all, some threads will be crossposted
and misposted, which will generate lots of flamewars in and of itself.
If one wants to read an abbrevated version of news.groups, that already
exists: it's call news.announce.newgroups
Secondly, this proposal seeks to siphon off "flames" from substantive
discussion. But what precisely consititutes a flame? I argued
extensively against rec.arts.movies.* and soc.culture.jewish.singles.
I consider that all of my comments were substantive -- controversial,
perhaps, but substantive. Under your scheme, I would have posted to
news.groups.rec and news.groups.soc, respectively. Nevertheless, there
are some people on the net who seem to feel that "flames" consist of any
sort of heated disagreement whatsoever -- not merely personal insults,
profanity, and so forth.
Thirdly, as Bruce points out, hierarchies influence each other. Suppose
it is unclear whether a group should go into, say, misc.* or soc.*? The
discussion will inevitably be crossposted. And then there are meta
issues that need to be discussed in a single forum -- the perennial
discussions about whether NO votes consistute censorship, for instance.
Fourthly, let's remember that this proposal will make the newsgroup
creation process even *more* confusing for newbies and casual readers.
As things stand right now, too many Usenet readers are unfamiliar with
the process of creating new groups. Most people vote lemming-like for
splits, without considering potential disadvantages. Very few people
read news.groups or news.admin. Why, then, do we seek to make
news.groups.* even MORE confusing?
If news.groups is to be split, the only practical way to do it is to have
news.groups.pre-rfd, news.groups.rfd, and news.group.cfv -- or somthing
alone those lines. With this sort of split, we could still discuss all
the meta-issues in a single forum. Nonetheless, there would still be a
lot of crossposting; the most diehard news.groupies would still read all
the groups, so they would not save any time; and pre-RFD's can sometimes
influence RFD's already in progress.
This is why I favor keeping news.groups intact.
--
////// // // ////// // ////// Christopher B. Stone
// ////// ///// // ///
// // // // // // /// "Consensus is the negation
////// // // // // // ////// of leadership." -Margaret Thatcher
Kent Paul Dolan
TC> Articles to be posted to news.groups.creation.status
TC> RFD original and revised
TC> CFV first and second
TC> VOTE results (without list of voters)
TC> "Current Status of Usenet Newsgroup Proposals"
Andrew Toppan <el...@wpi.edu> replied:
AT> This looks like darn near everything that goes to n.a.newgroups now.
AT> Why the result without the voters? The full result would still have
AT> to be posted to n.a.n. As it is now people can quickly see the
AT> result from the subject line and/or the first few lines of the
AT> article. They can then ignore the list of voters if they choose.
Agreed, with a demurer. There are people whose news access is most
sensitive to number of articles (read online, fight traffic level with
kill files), and others whose news access is most sensitive to number of
bytes (read offline, pay to download or receive via news to email
gateway, usually "blind" (without article preselection) in either case).
The latter group would be helped by a mechanism that weeds out the few,
big files from news.announce.newgroups.
Better, to split the announce traffic, and to focus the flame traffic,
would be a breakdown of each of the top seven levels like:
news.groups.create.rec.announce Moderated, by tale if he is willing. A
subdivided echo of announcements in
news.announce.newgroups.
news.groups.create.rec.discuss Moderated, civil, on-subject traffic
only. Volunteer moderator needed for
each.
news.groups.create.rec.advocacy Unmoderated, moderator dumps uncivil
stuff here, flamers playground.
That puts the raving close enough to the discussion that people would be
more willing to be moved out of the discussion group, while still
keeping a place for civil discussion. Moderation, on the group's
record, would be a necessity for the discussion group, and probably a
relief to most of the audience. I suggest that the moderator's _only_
recourse be moving an article from .discuss to .advocacy.
The net's other *.advocacy groups are familiar enough and successful
enough by now that this would probably be possible to get past a vote.
If the .discuss traffic is too heavy for moderation, either an automatic
multimoderator splitting out device like the one (once upon a time?)
used in alt.feminism would work, or the hierarchy could be subdivided
again.
There are probably enough of the net only interested in the soc.*
groups, or the sci.* groups, or the comp.* groups, that the split by
toplevel Thomas proposes in his draft would do people some good even if
no attempt were made to provide an echoed split of nan, and even if no
attempt were made to divide flames from civil, to the point discussion.
I just think that a lot more good could be done by addressing not only
the traffic level, but the traffic quality, in the same reorg. This one
is going to be so bloody, there is little likelihood of another one
being done soon.
[Oh, and by the way, it would probably be a good idea to establish the
convention early on that if the toplevel in which a group belongs
becomes an item of discussion, the discussion should move to .other.*
until the issue is resolved.]
My prejudice for comprehensive reorganizations is showing again. Not
too sorry about that, but I do recognize the proclevity in myself. I
find groups most useful in which the traffic is a few articles a day to
a few articles a year. News.groups, boosted by the current flamewar, is
running one or two hundred articles a day, far too much traffic to be
worth following, which dissuades most of the net from taking part.
The net has grown to the size where only the obsessed can care about or
even have an opinion about changes in most of it, at the "should this
newsgroup exist" level. Thomas has proposed the *.other group as the
place for meta discussions about better ways to do what we do to create
newsgroups. I'd be happier if there were a set of news.groups.meta.* in
his proposal as well. I don't think arguments over biz.* groups and
arguments about how managing the growth of the net newsgroup forest
should be done will be happy companions.
If we split the discuss, announce, and flame traffic by toplevel, and
provide a "meta" group, then the create/creation level in Thomas'
proposal is unnecessary, and so we'd end up with something like:
news.groups.meta (.*)
news.groups.other (.*)
news.groups.comp (.*)
news.groups.news (.*)
news.groups.misc (.*)
news.groups.rec (.*)
news.groups.soc (.*)
news.groups.talk (.*)
news.groups.sci (.*)
Replacing news.groups, with or without my suggested further subdivision
of announce, discuss, and advocacy for each of those groups. That looks
quite a bit prettier than Thomas' proposal, which creates a whole extra
level rather than completing the announce subdivision and providing a
separate meta-discussion group.
Without my further subsplit, none of the groups would be moderated,
news.announce.newgroups announcement crossposts would be parceled out
into them appropriately by by the news.announce.newgroups moderator, and
the groups would be simply subdivided discussion groups of the quality
of news.groups but with a fraction of the volume.
With my split, things might improve more. (Or not. That's why we have
votes.)
And, when the time comes, rather than a vote up and down on each of the
newsgroups proposed, I'd suggest a two tier vote, with only two items
on the ballot:
1) Should the current news.groups newsgroup become a node (no posting)
rather than a leaf, and be split into a hierarchy with a subtree for
each of the "big seven" toplevel hierarchies, a place for "other"
toplevels, and a place for newsgroup reorganization meta-discussions,
like:
news.groups.meta
news.groups.other
news.groups.comp
news.groups.news
news.groups.misc
news.groups.rec
news.groups.soc
news.groups.talk
news.groups.sci
2) If so, should a further subdivision making each of those groups a
node and divding their traffic into leaves named *.discuss
(moderated), *.announce (moderated), and *.advocacy (unmoderated) be
included in the reorganization?
The reasoning being that there are a _lot_ of partial concurrances that
would make no sense at all. It makes no sense (it won't work) to split
discuss and advocacy unless the split is enforced, for example.
Splitting out comp and sci without splitting out the others also makes
no real sense.
One of the things news.groups.meta.announce provides is a place to say
"it's time to completely revise our process". I'd expect a lot of
proposals from overwhelmed sysadmins to show up there. Discussions
about what should comprise a vote sufficient to mandate the change could
run on in news.groups.meta.advocacy until long after I am dead and gone.
Someone (tale) also has to pay attention to the unusual situation that
the interim rerouting for news.groups is news.groups.(*.)other, not the
usual news.groups.(*.)misc.
Bruce Baugh
cbs...@phoenix.princeton.edu (Christopher B. Stone) wrote:
:Secondly, this proposal seeks to siphon off "flames" from substantive
:discussion. But what precisely consititutes a flame?
An excellent point - there is no objective line between serious
discussion and flamage. They're regions on a continuum.
:If news.groups is to be split, the only practical way to do it is
to have
:news.groups.pre-rfd, news.groups.rfd, and news.group.cfv -- or somthing
:alone those lines. With this sort of split, we could still discuss all
:the meta-issues in a single forum. Nonetheless, there would still be a
:lot of crossposting; the most diehard news.groupies would still read all
:the groups, so they would not save any time; and pre-RFD's can sometimes
:influence RFD's already in progress.
I was thinking the same thing, and thinking that it'd fail for the
same reason - people won't change newsgroups lines in a timely
manner, or will (a la Speedbump) keep adding their favorite
newsgroups.
News.groups is one that just doesn't, I think, split sensibly into
any finer gradation. And I'm pleased to read agreement with a far
less anarchistic approach to the net than I have. :-) Threading is
the only viable solution to the problem.
bruceab@teleport.com___________http://www.teleport.com/~bruceab/
List Manager, Christlib, for Christian and libertarian concerns
Preview S.M. Stirling's forthcoming novel DRAKON at
http://www.teleport.com/~bruceab/drakon.html
Dan Hartung
sta...@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley) wrote:
>Is this an example of a broken gateway somewhere, plastering
>"t...@mcs.com" onto copies of other people's articles and reposting them?
>This is not the first occurance of this in this newsgroup.
>
>In article <3lil9h$9...@venus.mcs.com>, Thomas Cuny <t...@MCS.COM> wrote:
>>In article <fIHfvELk...@teleport.com>,
>>Bruce Baugh <bru...@teleport.com> wrote:
>>>: news.groups
>>
>>Two things.
>
>No, Bruce Baugh wrote that.
It's not a broken gateway; MCS is one of the top 15 or so internet
providers. I'm using it.
I have no idea what news software t...@mcs.com is using, but he sure
ain't using GOOD software. Unfortunately, that reflects poorly
on his proposal and ability to handle what could easily be termed
the number one most-difficult newsgroup split on the net.
--
Daniel A. Hartung * dhar...@mcs.com * http://www.mcs.net/~dhartung/home.html
\\ You got a plan? / Try not to get killed. \\ Support the new hierarchy //
// Ivanova/Sheridan, "The Long Dark" // for the arts & humanities! \\
\\ Official Member, National B5 Emmy Lobby \\ Read news.groups. //
Dan Hartung
>Daniel Hartung <dhar...@MCS.COM> wrote:
>>Save for this last part, which really should be what I've semi-
>>seriously proposed as talk.politics.usenet, your main thrust
>>is to separate flames from some mythical flame-free "newsgroup
>>creation process".
>>
>>As this is pretty nigh impossible, this proposal is doomed
>>to failure, defined as not solving the problem it set out to.
>
are you posting with???]
>
>RESPONSE:
> news.groups.creation.status will be absolutely noise free
> and absolutely flame free. This is the group that most
> people will be reading.
You've just described news.announce.newgroups.
Albert Crosby
It's a close tie between restructuring news.groups and redefining the
"voting"/"interest poll" process. Proposals for one, the other, or both,
crop up quite regularly...
This one even brings back an old familiar in the newsgroup creation wars,
KPD. Oh, the memories!
xant...@well.sf.ca.us (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
Anyways... IMHO, efforts of this nature are pretty much doomed to failure.
Why? Usenet has sort of reached a critical mass where changes of this
magnitude become difficult or impossible. Besides, it's rarely the people
that all of this really effects who speak up - the news administrators
themselves. After all, it's *their* disk space that we're all
using/abusing.
>Thomas Cuny <t...@MCS.COM> wrote:
>TC> Articles to be posted to news.groups.creation.status
>TC> RFD original and revised
>TC> CFV first and second
>TC> VOTE results (without list of voters)
>TC> "Current Status of Usenet Newsgroup Proposals"
>Andrew Toppan <el...@wpi.edu> replied:
>AT> This looks like darn near everything that goes to n.a.newgroups now.
>AT> Why the result without the voters? The full result would still have
>AT> to be posted to n.a.n. As it is now people can quickly see the
>AT> result from the subject line and/or the first few lines of the
>AT> article. They can then ignore the list of voters if they choose.
I can't see anything that's gained by the changes that Thomas proposes to
news.announce.newgroups. Kent validly suggests that there are those who
pay based on # of bytes and have to download entire articles. Perhaps a
valid solution that would be minor is to post the results seperate from the
voter list in n.a.n.
Kent, in his famed "split-it-up and add a .advocacy" style, suggests:
>Better, to split the announce traffic, and to focus the flame traffic,
>would be a breakdown of each of the top seven levels like:
>news.groups.create.rec.announce Moderated, by tale if he is willing. A
> subdivided echo of announcements in
> news.announce.newgroups.
>news.groups.create.rec.discuss Moderated, civil, on-subject traffic
> only. Volunteer moderator needed for
> each.
>news.groups.create.rec.advocacy Unmoderated, moderator dumps uncivil
> stuff here, flamers playground.
Noone else has (yet) honored this proposal with even an acknowledgement. I
will. I didn't say endorse it. I can't do that.
First, I can't see any need to subdivide the traffic that is
currently in n.a.n. Most people who are really following group proposals
deserve to exposed to at least the subject lines of proposals for all 7
hierarchies.
Second, can you really find anybody willing to volunteer for the job of
moderating a news.groups.create.rec.discuss group? Come on, during some
proposals there simply aren't enough hours in the day to read all of the
traffic generated. And it can be very hard to decide what is civil and what
is not. For example, during the soc.religion.islam.ahmadiyya (did I manage
to spell that in a way remotely acceptable?), some of the debate became
centered on the validity of ahmadiyya-ism and especially on its claim to be
a vaild part of the Islam faith. How's the moderator supposed to decide
what is civil and on-topic in such a debate in a satisfactory manner? He or
she simply can't. In fact, I don't believe that an active discussion about
creating a new group could or should be moderated.
>If the .discuss traffic is too heavy for moderation, either an automatic
>multimoderator splitting out device like the one (once upon a time?)
>used in alt.feminism would work, or the hierarchy could be subdivided
>again.
Someone once proposed giving each rfd an arbitrary number when it comes up,
and then creating a news.groups.1023 (for example) that lasted only for the
length of the discussion+vote+contest period to handle the traffic. That
actually sounds reasonable compared to some other suggestions.
>[Oh, and by the way, it would probably be a good idea to establish the
>convention early on that if the toplevel in which a group belongs
>becomes an item of discussion, the discussion should move to .other.*
>until the issue is resolved.]
Perhaps the current newsgroup advisory group can solve this, to a large
extent. After all, it's going to be pretty rare when someone's life or
employment depend on the name given to a newsgroup. How about creating the
International Standard for Newsgroup Naming Conventions with an arbitrating
body? Kind of a dewey decimal or Library of Congress naming scheme for
Usenet? (This is only partially in jest, btw.)
>My prejudice for comprehensive reorganizations is showing again. Not
>too sorry about that, but I do recognize the proclevity in myself. I
>find groups most useful in which the traffic is a few articles a day to
>a few articles a year. News.groups, boosted by the current flamewar, is
>running one or two hundred articles a day, far too much traffic to be
>worth following, which dissuades most of the net from taking part.
This doesn't happen, though. Witness the results of splitting
rec.arts.startrek. First there was one umanageably large group, and a small
moderated announce group. The group was split, and now there are several
unmanageably large groups, and a small moderated announce group. From
experience, it appears that the result of splitting a group is not smaller,
higher quality groups but rather more groups with more posters posting more
material.
When a popular newsgroup is split, lurkers begin posting until the group is
so unmanageably large that new lurkers are unwilling to post. :-)
>And, when the time comes, rather than a vote up and down on each of the
>newsgroups proposed, I'd suggest a two tier vote, with only two items
>on the ballot:
HOOLLDDD IT! We'd have to have a completely seperate vote on this question.
Currently, as KPD well knows, such votes are not allowed. :-)
>1) Should the current news.groups newsgroup become a node (no posting)
> rather than a leaf, and be split into a hierarchy with a subtree for
> each of the "big seven" toplevel hierarchies, a place for "other"
> toplevels, and a place for newsgroup reorganization meta-discussions,
> like:
>2) If so, should a further subdivision making each of those groups a
> node and divding their traffic into leaves named *.discuss
> (moderated), *.announce (moderated), and *.advocacy (unmoderated) be
> included in the reorganization?
This soulds like a straw poll rather than a formal vote...
>The reasoning being that there are a _lot_ of partial concurrances that
>would make no sense at all. It makes no sense (it won't work) to split
>discuss and advocacy unless the split is enforced, for example.
Somehow, it manages to work in the comp.*.advocacy groups. It might work
very well to have two unmoderated groups. Perhaps the following
reorganization would work:
news.announce.newgroups (moderated) No change to charter, etc.
news.groups.discuss - discussion of current proposals
news.groups.advocacy - preliminary discussion, followup discussion, issues
related to the newsgroup creation process.
Or hey! Even better:
news.groups.announce - Move the current news.announce.newgroups here.
news.groups.discuss - Discussion of proposed news groups
Fewer groups propbably means less, but higher quality traffic.
>Splitting out comp and sci without splitting out the others also makes
>no real sense.
Why not? If a substantial majority of news readers feel that only those two
hierarchies need to be discussed seperately, it could work very well.
You could argue that there's a fair bit of overlap between, say soc. and
talk., and that proposals for those hierarchies should be dealt with
together. It may be tyhat comp.* groups don't overlap much with the others
and can easily be discussed seperately - probably true.
Albert
[Posting in his normal style of long responses that tend to be far and few
between. Oh well.]
--
Albert Crosby | Microcomputer & Network Support | IBM Certified
acr...@comp.uark.edu | University of Arkansas | OS/2 Engineer &
1 501 575 4452 | College of Agriculture And | Lan Server
=======Team OS/2=======| Home Economics | Administrator*
Thomas Cuny
Albert Crosby <acr...@comp.uark.edu> wrote:
>Welcome to the oft-recurring thread of restructuring news.groups.
>
>It's a close tie between restructuring news.groups and redefining the
>"voting"/"interest poll" process. Proposals for one, the other, or both,
>crop up quite regularly...
>
Was there ever a formal vote on restructuring news.groups?
--
t...@mcs.com
Kai Henningsen
> This is the way anarchies develop - by cases. What's said about
> soc.support.zoophilia does have implications for
> misc.activism.militia, which in turn has implications for
> news.admin.high-council. The reorganization of the trading cards
> hierarchy sets precedents which those reorganizing the Pascal
> hierarchy should know aobut. And so forth and so on.
True. But on the other hand, as things stand today, news.groups is so
large that very few people read about those precedents they should know
for their next proposal, because they don't read anything not relating to
their proposal anyway. It's just too much.
> Splitting news.groups guarantees only that the wheel will get
> reinvented lots more times.
Leaving it as-is guarantees just the same.
However, I'm not convinced that a split by hierarchy is really the way to
go, for the same reasons others already cited.
Maybe something along the lines of pre-RFD, during RFD, and post-RFD
(i.e., CFV and after) might be useful. To make this work, I think the
"during RFD" part would have to be moderated - maybe robo-moderated? I
don't really like that part, but I see no other way (except doing a
retromod, and I don't think that proposal would ever go through - it's
just not the Usenet way of thinking).
Kai
--
Internet: k...@ms.maus.de, k...@khms.westfalen.de
Bang: major_backbone!{ms.maus.de!kh,khms.westfalen.de!kai}
## CrossPoint v3.02 ##
Eric Jaron Stieglitz
Kai Henningsen <k...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>
>Maybe something along the lines of pre-RFD, during RFD, and post-RFD
>(i.e., CFV and after) might be useful.
What would be the point? Groups should split so that people who want to
avoid certain subjects may do so easily. Since most likely anyone who
reads one of these groups would read all of them, this wouldn't help organize
things any better.
--
Eric Jaron Stieglitz eph...@ctr.columbia.edu
Home: (212) 853-6771 Assistant Systems Manager at the
Work: (212) 854-6020 Center for Telecommunications Research
Fax : (212) 854-2497 http://www.ctr.columbia.edu/people/Eric.html
S.W.F. Borthwick
In article <3m0mep$l...@sol.ctr.columbia.edu>, Eric Jaron Stieglitz
(eph...@meteor.ctr.columbia.edu) writes:
>In article <5jN8L...@khms.westfalen.de>,
>Kai Henningsen <k...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>>
>>Maybe something along the lines of pre-RFD, during RFD, and post-RFD
>>(i.e., CFV and after) might be useful.
>
> What would be the point? Groups should split so that people who want to
>avoid certain subjects may do so easily. Since most likely anyone who
>reads one of these groups would read all of them, this wouldn't help organize
>things any better.
>
like myself, joining for the whole process for one group; given
propagation delays they could still be answering in the RFD group
while those closer to the centre have moved on to the CFV group or
maybe they miss the 2nd (&c) RFD and move to the CFV group
prematurely thinking they had missed that.
I started out liking the idea of a hierarchy-based split then saw
Peter's post and have been convinced that my 1st reaction was
newbieish (sp?) and not thought through. I have never liked the
stages of process split however as I simply don't see it helping
people like myself, principally because 3 - 5 day propagation delays
are not uncommon (often longer) and that eats up too much of the
typically suggested 21 day RFD and CFV periods - I reckon in some
cases I won't see the results until it is too late to complain.
__
Simon Borthwick, sw...@bokop.win-uk.net
BOKOP Information Systems Ltd, Tel (+44) 0181 567 6505
Ealing, England
--
| Fidonet: S.W.F. Borthwick 1:270/211...@fidonet.org
| Internet: 270-211-777!S.W.F..Borthwick@mdtnbbs.com
| Standard disclaimer: The views of this user are strictly his own.
| From Mdtn_BBS 1 717 944-9653 [ In the Heart of Three Mile Island ]
Bruce Baugh
eph...@meteor.ctr.columbia.edu (Eric Jaron Stieglitz) wrote:
:In article <5jN8L...@khms.westfalen.de>,
:Kai Henningsen <k...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
:>
:>Maybe something along the lines of pre-RFD, during RFD, and post-RFD
:>(i.e., CFV and after) might be useful.
:
: What would be the point? Groups should split so that people who want to
:avoid certain subjects may do so easily. Since most likely anyone who
:reads one of these groups would read all of them, this wouldn't help
organize
:things any better.
Exactly. My gut-level sense is that there's probably little to be done about
fixing news.groups. Things like the "Tale as Dictator" threads only make it
worse, of course, and more people need to be using their Followup-To lines.
But let's face it. There's a lot of people on Usenet. _Any_ system with even
the tiniest measure of central control is going to generate a lot of
traffic.
Aaron R. Priven
>In article <5jN8L...@khms.westfalen.de>,
>Kai Henningsen <k...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>>
>>Maybe something along the lines of pre-RFD, during RFD, and post-RFD
>>(i.e., CFV and after) might be useful.
>
> What would be the point? Groups should split so that people who want to
>avoid certain subjects may do so easily. Since most likely anyone who
>reads one of these groups would read all of them, this wouldn't help organize
>things any better.
Not true. I would like to avoid the post-RFD flames and especially
post-CFV flames, although I am interested in RFDs and pre-RFD discussions.
=Aaron=
--
Aaron Priven; San Jose, CA, USA. aar...@best.com.
Are computers alive? I know my computer doesn't have a life,
because it spends all its time on the net.
S.W.F. Borthwick
In article <3m0mep$l...@sol.ctr.columbia.edu>, Eric Jaron Stieglitz (eph...@meteor.ctr.columbia.edu) writes:
>Kai Henningsen <k...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote:
>>
>>Maybe something along the lines of pre-RFD, during RFD, and post-RFD
>>(i.e., CFV and after) might be useful.
>
> What would be the point? Groups should split so that people who want to
>avoid certain subjects may do so easily. Since most likely anyone who
>reads one of these groups would read all of them, this wouldn't help organize
>things any better.
>
Jim Jewett
Aaron R. Priven <aar...@best.com> wrote:
>I would like to avoid the post-RFD flames and especially
>post-CFV flames, although I am interested in RFDs and pre-RFD discussions.
Unfortunately, without moderation (which, even with an automoderator
to merely check subject lines, would set off too many hot buttons),
the people whose repetitive arguments you wish to avoid are the same
ones who woudn't move the discussion...
_________ Have a favorite group or mailing list? Describe it to
| grou...@pitt.edu
jJ | Take only memories. ji...@eecs.umich.edu
\__/ Leave not even footprints. jew...@pitt.edu
Aaron R. Priven
>In article <3m45mh$6...@shell1.best.com>,
>Aaron R. Priven <aar...@best.com> wrote:
>
>>I would like to avoid the post-RFD flames and especially
>>post-CFV flames, although I am interested in RFDs and pre-RFD discussions.
>
>Unfortunately, without moderation (which, even with an automoderator
>to merely check subject lines, would set off too many hot buttons),
>the people whose repetitive arguments you wish to avoid are the same
>ones who woudn't move the discussion...
It wouldn't hurt to try. And I think many of the people who argue
about stuff like this (the news.admin vote for example) would move it.