RFD: rec.games.board.{worldinflames, misc}
Richard Gadsden
REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
unmoderated group rec.games.board.worldinflames
unmoderated group rec.games.board.misc (renames rec.games.board)
Newsgroup line:
rec.games.board.misc Discussion and hints on board games.
rec.games.board.worldinflames The game World in Flames.
This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of a
world-wide unmoderated Usenet newsgroup rec.games.board.worldinflames
and the renaming of the group rec.games.board to
rec.games.board.general. This is not a Call for Votes (CFV); you
cannot vote at this time. Procedural details are below.
RATIONALE: rec.games.board.worldinflames
The World in Flames mailing list <w...@supernova.uwindsor.ca> has 196
subscribers as of 30 April 1996 and generates an average of c.50
messages per day. There is also a closed mailing list that discusses
material that is commercially confidential to the company making the
game, which is particularly active at the moment, since a new edition
is to be published this Spring or Summer - and this list is diverting
a significant portion of the traffic from the open list, as it
includes 36 of the most prolific posters.
The owners of the listserv machine (Windsor University, Canada)
have stated that the traffic is becoming excessive for their
listserv machine to handle, but are prepared to continue to run
the list until an alternative home can be found.
While it is hoped that another mailing list will be established -
especially as several members of the list do not have adequate
access to netnews - a newsgroup has been under consideration
for some time, and the possibility of the mailing list disappearing
has served to concentrate minds.
Traffic levels on the mailing list are a justification for the group
alone - but there is always noticeable traffic on rec.games board
and several former or potential subscribers have been put off the
mailing list by the traffic level.
The list is archived at ftp://ftp2.uwindsor.ca/pub/archive/
Since "world-in-flames" is one character over the 14 character
limit, it was felt by the proponent that leaving out the
hyphens was clearer than either "wif", which is common usage
for players, but hardly clear to the general gaming community,
much less the general usenet community, or "world-in-flame"
which seems less than clear.
RATIONALE: rec.games.board.misc
There is a long-standing convention that as hierarchies develop
out of what were groups, the base group is renamed to the
same hierarchial level as the new subgroup(s). ".misc"
is the conventional usage in this situation and seems
adequately clear in this case.
The proponent would like to remind voters that "miscellaneous"
simply means "that which is not dealt with elsewhere", in this case
all topics in boardgaming apart from Cosmic Encounter, World in Flames
and the selling and buying of games. It is not intended to denigrate
or lower in status this general group.
It is certainly to be hoped that rec.games.board can get through
this transition with the minimum of flameage. It will remain
difficult to create rec.games.board.* groups without some
rename of the base group at some stage.
CHARTER: rec.games.board.worldinflames
This is a group for general discussion of all subjects concerning
the game "World in Flames" published by Australian Design Group.
Advertising, other than product announcements of games related to
World in Flames or new editions, errata or supplements thereto,
is strictly prohibited. Binaries are also prohibited, and should
be posted in alt.binaries.misc, or another appropriate binaries
group. Extended debates concerning the relative merits of World
in Flames as related to other WWII games are strongly encouraged
to be conducted in rec.games.board.general or an appropriate advocacy
group. Debates on how certain parts of World War II might have
taken place had different strategic options been taken would
be more appropriate in soc.history.what-if or in
soc.history.war.world-war-ii. The selling of new or used
copies of World in Flames should take place on
rec.games.board.marketplace.
END CHARTER.
CHARTER: rec.games.board.misc
This is a group for general discussion of all board games.
Games, such as Cosmic Encounter (rec.games.board.ce),
Diplomacy (rec.games.diplomacy), Chess (rec.games.chess)
or World in Flames (rec.games.board.worldinflames), which
have their own newsgroups, should be discussed in those
groups in detail, although short postings on these subjects,
or discussions on the relative merits of these games are
permitted.
Games which are abstract in nature, though are played on
a board, such as Checkers/Draughts, Chinese Checkers/Chinese
Chess or Nomic may be better discussed on rec.games.abstract.
Some games that are not played on a board may be best
discussed in this group, especially games that are
closely related to board games, like Up Front or
Jutland.
END CHARTER.
PROCEDURE:
This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes. In this phase
of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroups
should raised and resolved. The discussion period will continue for a
minimum of 21 days (starting from from when the first RFD for this
proposal is posted to news.announce.newgroups). All discussion should
be posted to news.groups.
At the end of the discussion period, a Call for Votes (CFV) will be
posted by a neutral vote taker.
This RFD attempts to fully comply with Usenet newsgroup creation
guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup" and "How
to Make a New Group Proposal". Please refer to these documents if
you have questions about the process.
DISTRIBUTION:
This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups:
news.announce.newgroups, news.groups,
rec.games.board.
and the following mailing list:
w...@supernova.uwindsor.ca (Discussion of World in Flames)
Subcribe via: list...@supernova.uwindsor.ca
with the message body 'subscribe wif'
-
Proponent: Richard Gadsden <C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk>
Steve MacGregor
Jene tajpis lastatempe Richard Gadsden:
| REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
| unmoderated group rec.games.board.worldinflames
| unmoderated group rec.games.board.misc (renames rec.games.board)
| Newsgroup line:
| rec.games.board.misc Discussion and hints on board games.
| rec.games.board.worldinflames The game World in Flames.
On the first proposal, I agree that group <rec.games.board.worldinflames>
should be created, as the proposer has shown that such a group would be
useful.
But on the second, I do not agree that <rec.games.board> should be
renamed. It currently exists EVEN THOUGH the groups <rec.games.ce>,
<rec.games.chess>, and <rec.games.go> also exist. Adding the suffix
".misc" serves absolutely no purpose at all, and the fact that there are
groups that =do= have the suffix without being harmed by it, does not
mean that it does any good.
--
____ "Go: It's all fun and games, until someone loses an eye!"
(_) /: ,/
/___/ (_) Steve MacGregor, Phoenix, AZ
Alec Habig
Steve MacGregor <stev...@indirect.com> wrote:
>
>On the first proposal, I agree that group <rec.games.board.worldinflames>
>should be created, as the proposer has shown that such a group would be
>useful.
>
>But on the second, I do not agree that <rec.games.board> should be
>renamed. It currently exists EVEN THOUGH the groups <rec.games.ce>,
><rec.games.chess>, and <rec.games.go> also exist. Adding the suffix
>".misc" serves absolutely no purpose at all, and the fact that there are
>groups that =do= have the suffix without being harmed by it, does not
>mean that it does any good.
Agreed. If we make a .misc, then we'd also have to rename a lot of other
groups to fit the heirarchy. While the Usenet Cabal might not like us _not_
having a .misc group, everyone in the effective groups would like the chaos
ensuing after a mega rename-fest a lot less.
--
Alec Habig, Indiana University High Energy Astrophysics
aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu
http://www.astro.indiana.edu/home/ahabig/
Ban the Bomb: Make the world safe for conventional warfare!
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Alec Habig <aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu> writes:
> Agreed. If we make a .misc, then we'd also have to rename a lot of
> other groups to fit the heirarchy.
What on earth are you talking about?
--
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Markus Stumptner
In article <4neh83$l...@globe.indirect.com>, stev...@indirect.com (Steve MacGregor) writes:
>On the first proposal, I agree that group <rec.games.board.worldinflames>
>should be created, as the proposer has shown that such a group would be
>useful.
>
>But on the second, I do not agree that <rec.games.board> should be
>renamed. It currently exists EVEN THOUGH the groups <rec.games.ce>,
><rec.games.chess>, and <rec.games.go> also exist. Adding the suffix
>".misc" serves absolutely no purpose at all, and the fact that there are
>groups that =do= have the suffix without being harmed by it, does not
>mean that it does any good.
Agreed. Neither the Cosmic Encounter newsgroup nor the marketplace
newsgroup have made such a change necessary in the past. I don't see
why rec.games.board.worldinflames will suddenly alter the situation.
I propose removing this part of the proposal.
Btw, I would favor rec.games.board.wif.
--
Markus Stumptner m...@dbai.tuwien.ac.at
Technische Universitaet Wien m...@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria vexpert!m...@relay.eu.net
You may just have missed your last chance for incremental garbage collection.
Jim Riley
In article <qum20kj...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU> Russ Allbery wrote:
>In news.groups, Alec Habig <aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu> writes:
>
>> Agreed. If we make a .misc, then we'd also have to rename a lot of
>> other groups to fit the heirarchy.
>
>What on earth are you talking about?
If we're going to play a place for everything, everything in its place.
AND that is exactly what this .misc naming is about, then rec.games.chess.*
should be renamed to rec.games.board.chess.*, likewise with the
backgammon and diplomacy groups.
Is there any basis for getting the RFD split? How is it appropriate
that a proposal for r.g.b.wif should include the renaming of r.g.b
to r.g.b.misc, when wif traffic is 7 of 1000 notes (not counting those
concerning the RFD)(for that matter less than Cosmic Encounters and
buy/sell type articles). If there were no wif proposal to use as a
stalking horse, the proposal for the .misc renaming would have
appropriately been sent to *all* 30 or so board game lists that
are listed in the r.g.b. FAQ. Instead it is being sent to only the
wif mailing list in hopes that those interested in wif will accidentally
vote for the renaming of a group that they are leaving. A .misc
renaming might be appropriate if it would be for leftovers. In this
case the leftovers constitute 99%+ of the traffic.
Would tale and group-advice approve a 2nd RFD that eliminated the
.misc renaming?
--
Jim Riley
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Jim Riley <Jim...@gnn.com> writes:
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> In news.groups, Alec Habig <aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu> writes:
>>> Agreed. If we make a .misc, then we'd also have to rename a lot of
>>> other groups to fit the heirarchy.
>> What on earth are you talking about?
> If we're going to play a place for everything, everything in its place.
> AND that is exactly what this .misc naming is about, then
> rec.games.chess.* should be renamed to rec.games.board.chess.*, likewise
> with the backgammon and diplomacy groups.
While I must admit I wouldn't object strenuously to that eventually
happening, I think it's likely to be rather politically untenable at the
moment. In any event, renaming rec.games.board to rec.games.board.misc
certainly does *not* require you to rename any other newsgroups.
Most early newsgroup naming mistakes are corrected a little bit at a time
when there's an opportunity, not all at once. (And yes, I am aware that
not everyone would consider rec.games.board as opposed to
rec.games.board.misc a naming mistake.)
> Would tale and group-advice approve a 2nd RFD that eliminated the .misc
> renaming?
Yes. While we wouldn't be all that happy about it, since we by and large
as a group consider renaming parent groups so that they fit into the
hierarchy a Good Thing, it is the option of the proponent whether or not
to include a renaming in any given proposal.
Steve MacGregor
Jene tajpis lastatempe Russ Allbery:
| In any event, renaming rec.games.board to rec.games.board.misc
| certainly does *not* require you to rename any other newsgroups.
But then, the renaming of a bunch of other groups (by adding ".misc" to
the ends of their names) does not require us to rename <rec.games.board>.
But while you're at creating <rec.games.board.worldinflames>, why don't
you assume that at some time in the future, the branch will sprout yet
another twig, and name the thing <rec.games.board.worldinflames.misc>
right now, and avoid all this argument later?
In any case, when the vote comes around, I'll vote for the new group,
but against the senseless renaming of the present one.
--
--------------------------------------------------
Help stamp out, eliminate, and abolish redundancy!
--------------------------------------------------
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Steve MacGregor <stev...@indirect.com> writes:
> Jene tajpis lastatempe Russ Allbery:
> | In any event, renaming rec.games.board to rec.games.board.misc
> | certainly does *not* require you to rename any other newsgroups.
> But then, the renaming of a bunch of other groups (by adding ".misc"
> to the ends of their names) does not require us to rename
> <rec.games.board>.
You are right. As I have already mentioned, the proponent is not required
to include the .misc renaming. I simply think it's a good idea.
> But while you're at creating <rec.games.board.worldinflames>, why
> don't you assume that at some time in the future, the branch will sprout
> yet another twig, and name the thing
> <rec.games.board.worldinflames.misc> right now, and avoid all this
> argument later?
Because for as long as it has that name and there are no other subgroups,
it will be confusing. The purpose of all of this is to avoid confusion
for readers, and having a .misc group tells readers "look here last; there
may be a specific group more applicable to your post." If there aren't
any other groups, that gives a false impression.
Now if you were intending to almost immediately begin creating other
subgroups, I can see the argument. For example, should someone propose
soc.sexuality (again), I would highly recommend that it be proposed as
soc.sexuality.misc instead since we're pretty much guaranteed to have more
groups in that hierarchy. I don't see such a situation with WIF.
> In any case, when the vote comes around, I'll vote for the new group,
> but against the senseless renaming of the present one.
That is obviously your option.
Colin Douthwaite
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) wrote:
>In news.groups, Jim Riley <Jim...@gnn.com> writes:
>> Russ Allbery wrote:
>>> In news.groups, Alec Habig <aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu> writes:
>
>>>> Agreed. If we make a .misc, then we'd also have to rename a lot of
>>>> other groups to fit the heirarchy.
>
>>> What on earth are you talking about?
>
>> If we're going to play a place for everything, everything in its place.
>> AND that is exactly what this .misc naming is about, then
>> rec.games.chess.* should be renamed to rec.games.board.chess.*, likewise
>> with the backgammon and diplomacy groups.
>
>While I must admit I wouldn't object strenuously to that eventually
>happening, I think it's likely to be rather politically untenable at the
>certainly does *not* require you to rename any other newsgroups.
>
>when there's an opportunity, not all at once. (And yes, I am aware that
>not everyone would consider rec.games.board as opposed to
>rec.games.board.misc a naming mistake.)
>
>> Would tale and group-advice approve a 2nd RFD that eliminated the .misc
>> renaming?
>Yes. While we wouldn't be all that happy about it, since we by and large
>as a group consider renaming parent groups so that they fit into the
>hierarchy a Good Thing, it is the option of the proponent whether or not
>to include a renaming in any given proposal.
When are group-advice, et al, going to consider that a substantial
percentage of Net users, in turn, regard renaming of parent
newsgroups as a Bad Thing not a Good Thing ? For at least 18 months
now this message has been conveyed...but...the *.misc goes on.
Bye,
Colin Douthwaite
Richard Gadsden (C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk) wrote:
>Steve MacGregor wrote:
>>
>> Jene tajpis lastatempe Richard Gadsden:
>> | REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
>> | unmoderated group rec.games.board.worldinflames
>> | unmoderated group rec.games.board.misc (renames rec.games.board)
>>
>> | Newsgroup line:
>> | rec.games.board.misc Discussion and hints on board games.
>> | rec.games.board.worldinflames The game World in Flames.
>>
>> should be created, as the proposer has shown that such a group would be
>> useful.
>>
>> But on the second, I do not agree that <rec.games.board> should be
>> renamed. It currently exists EVEN THOUGH the groups <rec.games.ce>,
>> <rec.games.chess>, and <rec.games.go> also exist. Adding the suffix
>> ".misc" serves absolutely no purpose at all, and the fact that there are
>> groups that =do= have the suffix without being harmed by it, does not
>> mean that it does any good.
>>
>
>
>".misc" does serve a purpose; it distinguishes a group
>"rec.games.board" from a hierarchy "rec.games.board.*".
>
>There are technical reasons for doing this as well - not
>reasons for prohibiting the existence of a group and
>a hierarchy with the same name, but reasons for
>_preferring_ the organisation adopted:
>
>I quote (with permission) from personal email from David Lawrence:
>
>> News server filesystem performance is better when the kernel routine
>> that looks up pathnames doesn't have to search a directory full of
>> articles to find the subdirectory for an article posted to a subgroup.
>
>That means that the groups will get propogated faster if they
>are organised as proposed in the RFD - not much faster, but faster.
>
>This is a good thing.
>If it, as you say, does no harm, but _could_ do _some_ good,
>however little, then that is surely a reason for doing it.
<groan>...
We have been through this B News; C News; INN argument several times
before during the *.misc debates of 1995 and sysadmins have argued
the point in minute detail.
Perhaps the fairest appraisal is by Bengt Larssen who showed that it
is all a matter of opinion.
And in the sci.chem debate several sysadmins advised Joseph Merola
that the renamings of foo.bar to foo.bar.misc were not necessary.
The arguments are given below:
====================================================================
From: wak...@pinn.net (Tom Wakelyn)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.astro,news.groups
Subject: the misc goes on
Date: 6 Jul 1995 15:52:21 GMT
Message-ID: <3th0rl$7...@everest.pinn.net>
[...some preamble deleted for brevity...]
The group-advice people and their apparent hero, David Lawrence,
moderator of news.announce.newgroups, (for some reason they call him
tale) have been asked for specific cases where not using the misc
addition causes software problems to no avail. The situation
already exists. There are sub-groups to sci.physics and sci.astro
and no problems. Ask your system administrator if his software is
confused by these sub-groups.
One of our chemists asked the MODERATOR for the reason for changing
sci.chem to sci.chem.misc. His answer follows:
> There are both administrative and namespace consistency aspects for
> doing so. Briefly: it simplifies news system administration for
> people taking just that topic area, reduces cross-posting with the
> hierarchy some, lessens the perception by some peple (sic) that some
> topics are being "relegated to a subgroup", and keeps more clear the
> distinction of hierarchy vs group in the namespace model. It
> emphasizes to some sites taking just the parent group that a change
> has been made. This could be very important to the way their feeds
> are configured, especially with the advent of INN and its break from
> the B/C News hierarchal feeding structure. Finally, news server
> filesystem performance is better when the kernel routine that looks up
> pathnames doesn't have to search a directory full of articles to find
> the subdirectory for an article posted to a subgroup."
(The logic doesn't make sense to me either. TW)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is Bengt Larssen's response:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ben...@maths.lth.se (Bengt Larsson)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.astro,news.groups
Subject: Re: the misc goes on
Date: 7 Jul 1995 02:12:20 GMT
Organization: Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden
Lines: 97
Message-ID: <3ti564$r...@nic.lth.se>
In news.groups, wak...@pinn.net (Tom Wakelyn) wrote:
[a summary at end]
>One of our chemists asked the MODERATOR for the reason for changing
>sci.chem to sci.chem.misc. His answer follows:
>
>> There are both administrative and namespace consistency aspects for
>> doing so. Briefly: it simplifies news system administration for
>> people taking just that topic area,
For those who are using INN.
>> reduces cross-posting with the hierarchy some,
Well, it would be for the readers to have opinions on
the effects of that.
>> lessens the perception by some peple (sic) that some topics
>> are being "relegated to a subgroup",
Ditto, ie opinions differ.
>> and keeps more clear the
>> distinction of hierarchy vs group in the namespace model.
Ie, it's neater. I also think it's neater, but after all, that is
preference, not fact.
>> It
>> emphasizes to some sites taking just the parent group that a change
>> has been made.
It also signals to readers that a change has been made.
>>This could be very important to the way their feeds
>> are configured, especially with the advent of INN and its break from
>> the B/C News hierarchal feeding structure.
Same as mentioned at top.
>> Finally, news server
>> filesystem performance is better when the kernel routine that looks up
>> pathnames doesn't have to search a directory full of articles to find
>> the subdirectory for an article posted to a subgroup."
Depends on how many readers you have. Every access to a message,
whether open, create, or remove would cause a search through
a directory with a lot of files. Since the non-leaf groups
are in a minority anyway, I doubt it makes that much difference.
UUNET, and other sites with lots of feeds and few readers
would be extreme cases.
Summary of advantages:
For readers:
- It may cut down on crossposting between the "parent" group
(the "main" group) and subgroups, if this is desired.
- It signals to all readers that a reorganization has been made,
particulary when the "parent" newsgroup is removed.
- It makes it clearer that the .misc group is for topics not
covered in other subgroups, if that is what you want.
For admins:
- The newsfeed entry in INN becomes shorter, ie "news.group.*"
instead of "news.group,news.group.*".
- You will more likely notice the change in group structure,
especially when the base group is removed. Ie the same reason as
for readers.
- It saves a percentage of kernel lookups, particulary for sites with
lots of feeds and few readers.
- It's neater if you look at the spool directories manually
and work with the files there.
Disadvantages for readers:
- In some cases, a ".misc" group may not make a lot of sense,
ie soc.women.misc, soc.women.lesbian-and-bi, especially if created at
once, may sound funny from the reader perspective.
- In some cases the parent newsgroup really isn't "misc",
for example comp.arch has retained pretty much the same character
over the years, despite there being created other comp.arch.* groups.
The subgroups of comp.arch cover mostly new traffic (though on
related topics) and are not split-offs.
Disadvantages for admins:
None except as in the role of readers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Merola's report on Sys Admin's views on *.misc renamings:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jme...@vt.edu (Joseph S. Merola)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Renaming foo -> foo.misc
Date: Tue, 30 May 95 21:55:13 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Chemistry, Virginia Tech
Lines: 65
Message-ID: <jmerola.1...@news.vt.edu>
[...deletia for brevity...]
Before you dismiss me as a clueless newbie who just doesn't
understand, I have had email correspondence with a number of
administrators, including the one here at my site. They have all
said that the *.misc renaming is not necessary, the software (at
least the software they have) handles files and directories in the
same directory with no problem at all. The best comment was that
the time spent on debating the issue will outweigh _by orders of
magnitude_ any possible time saving by renaming all foo. groups to
foo.misc. I suggest that, especially for the administrator at my
site, you don't characterize these people as not understanding the
sysadmin side of things.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph S. Merola
Director of Graduate Education
Department of Chemistry Internet: JME...@VT.EDU
Virginia Tech Voice : (703) 231-4510
Blacksburg VA 24061-0212 FAX : (703) 231-3255
====================================================================
Bye,
Markus Stumptner
In article <4nvig7$k...@orm.southern.co.nz>, cf...@southern.co.nz (Colin Douthwaite) writes:
>Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) wrote:
>>> Would tale and group-advice approve a 2nd RFD that eliminated the .misc
>>> renaming?
>
>>Yes. While we wouldn't be all that happy about it, since we by and large
>>as a group consider renaming parent groups so that they fit into the
>>hierarchy a Good Thing, it is the option of the proponent whether or not
>>to include a renaming in any given proposal.
>
>When are group-advice, et al, going to consider that a substantial
>percentage of Net users, in turn, regard renaming of parent
>newsgroups as a Bad Thing not a Good Thing ? For at least 18 months
>now this message has been conveyed...but...the *.misc goes on.
I did not know that, but I'm not surprised - I know that I, at
least, prefer the old name. Also, I note that the argument that the
current name structure of the rec.games.board groups is supposedly
unique because of their ancient origin is not quite correct. For
example, rec.arts.sf.written has a subgroup
rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan, but there is no r.a.s.w.misc.
Yet, r.a.s.w is a child of the comparatively recent sf-lovers
reorganization.
Robert Ames
In article <4nvig7$k...@orm.southern.co.nz>,
cf...@southern.co.nz (Colin Douthwaite) wrote:
>Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) wrote:
>>Yes. While we wouldn't be all that happy about it, since we by and large
>>as a group consider renaming parent groups so that they fit into the
>>hierarchy a Good Thing, it is the option of the proponent whether or not
>>to include a renaming in any given proposal.
>
>When are group-advice, et al, going to consider that a substantial
>percentage of Net users, in turn, regard renaming of parent
>newsgroups as a Bad Thing not a Good Thing ? For at least 18 months
>now this message has been conveyed...but...the *.misc goes on.
I suppose it will be necessary to organize a bloc to vote "no" to every
.misc renaming. Don't expect group-advice to take advice.
Colin Douthwaite
Richard Gadsden (C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk) wrote:
>Markus Stumptner wrote:
>>
>> In article <4neh83$l...@globe.indirect.com>, stev...@indirect.com (Steve MacGregor) writes:
>> >should be created, as the proposer has shown that such a group would be
>> >useful.
>> >
>> >But on the second, I do not agree that <rec.games.board> should be
>> >renamed. It currently exists EVEN THOUGH the groups <rec.games.ce>,
>> ><rec.games.chess>, and <rec.games.go> also exist. Adding the suffix
>> >".misc" serves absolutely no purpose at all, and the fact that there are
>> >groups that =do= have the suffix without being harmed by it, does not
>> >mean that it does any good.
>>
>> newsgroup have made such a change necessary in the past. I don't see
>> why rec.games.board.worldinflames will suddenly alter the situation.
>> I propose removing this part of the proposal.
>>
>> Btw, I would favor rec.games.board.wif.
>>
>Just because two previous chances to clear up a naming situation
>have passed us by, there is no reason to ignore a third.
Yes there is...many readers of "rec.games.board" say they don't want
the renaming so why should you force it on them when previous RFD
proponents have not ?
You are not listening to the readership of rec.games.board !
Bye,
Colin Douthwaite
Richard Gadsden (C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk) wrote:
>William R. Ward wrote:
>>
>> In article <8322009...@uunet.uu.net>, Richard Gadsden <C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk> writes:
>> ) REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
>> ) unmoderated group rec.games.board.worldinflames
>> ) unmoderated group rec.games.board.misc (renames rec.games.board)
>>
>> ) Newsgroup line:
>> ) rec.games.board.misc Discussion and hints on board games.
>> ) rec.games.board.worldinflames The game World in Flames.
>>
>> Drop the rec.games.board.misc renaming please!! This serves no use
>> but to confuse new users and to make life easier for administrators of
>> BUGGY software.
>>
>I believe it is a clearer naming, but why should I drop the proposal?
>Vote it down.
I think you are probably very well aware that embedding the *.misc into a
multivote proposal increases the chances of the renaming succeeding.
In this case it isn't even a re-org it is the proposed addition of a
single subgroup and a subgroup which is likely to get very little
traffic after its creation.
There is no justification for your call to remove/rename the parent
newsgroup "rec.board.games".
Bye,
Colin Douthwaite
Richard Gadsden (C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk) wrote:
>David Karr wrote:
>>
>> In article <4nip8a$3...@bermuda.io.com> siri...@io.com (Sirilyan) writes:
>
>[early news software not dealing with foo.bar and foo.bar.baz]
>
>> *That* is the legitimate motivation, and while I recognize it as
>> demonstrable, I respectfully disagree with the proposed reaction
>> to it. As a computer professional, in a situation like this one,
>> my recommendation is to fix the software (e.g. by patching it to
>> handle this situation correctly), not to fix the users (by
>> intimidating them all into accepting a namespace they don't want).
>>
>> (In some cases, of course, a *.misc group is absolutely the most
>> sensible thing from an end-user's point of view, such as when it
>> really does cover just a few odds and ends. The proposed RFD
>> for rec.board.worldinflames doesn't look like one of those cases,
>> however.)
>>
>True. Personally, I don't have a problem with .misc _not_
>meaning 'a few odds and ends' - after all that's not what
>'miscellaneous' would be defined as in a dictionary
>I quote from David Wright in another context, but appropriate
>
>"Some suggested changing the software so .general was no longer a special
>word, but the rest recognised this was impossible, so the alternative of
>.misc was chosen for the purpose."
Aha..._now_ you are showing where your insistence on renaming
"rec.games.board" is coming from. David Wright is a member of Usenet
Group-advice and a strong pro-Miscist.
I also have a vague recollection that you yourself are a member
of group-mentors ?
Bye,
Colin Douthwaite
Richard Gadsden (C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk) wrote:
>[Sorry, newsserver's a bit odd at the moment - won't
>accept a cross-post. This is just going to news.groups.]
Hmm...very useful if you happen not to want the "rec.games.board"
readership to see this discussion.
Perhaps you should get a better server ? *8-)
>
>Jim Riley wrote:
>> Would tale and group-advice approve a 2nd RFD that eliminated the
>> .misc renaming?
> If I sent one in. But I'm not going to.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
In that case you are demonstrating the same attitude as the RFD
author of the "rec.games.go" re-org who refused to listen to
the readership protests about renaming to *.misc.
The readership responded quite rightly by voting against the entire
proposals.
Why the blazes should "rec.board.games" be renamed just to cater for
your wish to have a "worldinflames" subgroup ?
Bye,
Isaac Ji Kuo
I am a rec.games.board user who is heeding a "warning" posted to
rec.games.board. This is the first time I've read news.groups,
and normally I would not post to a group until well after I'd
been lurking for a while. However, the way in which you guys
hide discussion away from the people who are actually affected
forces me to do so...
The most important issue when determining if a .misc namechange
is called for, IMNSHO, is what the users of rec.games.board
want. It doesn't matter if all it is is a "gut feeling" or
if there's a logic-driven argument behind our desires, what we
want is what should count.
Recently, rec.arts.anime had its name changed to
rec.arts.anime.misc in a controverisal re-org which upset
many users of r.a.a.*. What's most telling is that during
the period in which both r.a.a and r.a.a.misc existed,
the bandwidth level on r.a.a.misc (including Xposts)
was only a fraction of the bandwidth level on r.a.a (excluding
Xposts). That means that r.a.a users did _not_ want the
name change!
(Of course, there may be many who didn't care what the group
was called and continued using r.a.a simply out of habit,
but these people by definition did not _want_ the name change.)
I see even less clamor for any sort of newsgroup changes in
rec.games.board than there was in rec.arts.anime (before the
re-org). I think it would be a shame if the same thing
happenned to rec.games.board that happenned to rec.arts.anime.
On a purely personal, selfish level, I favor r.g.b.misc slightly
over r.g.b (I also favored and voted for r.a.a.misc). However,
I don't want _any_ re-org unless the users of _rec.games.boad_
want it!
The CFV is not adequate for guaging popular demand. If it
were, then r.a.a.misc would have been used in favor of
r.a.a soon after it was created.
Please, therefore, do not put the .misc namechange in any CFV
until _after_ it has been demonstrated by at least some plausible
means that a large fraction of _rec.games.board_ users want
it! (I'd prefer a great majority, but I doubt even a large
fraction of r.g.b users _want_ a name change to r.g.b.misc.)
Otherwise, leave r.g.b as it is. Unlike r.a.a., there isn't
even anyone complaining that the "group is too big" or it
"needs to be split up". The group is just fine the way
it is. WWW links to r.g.b and references to it in FAQs
won't become out of date. People searching via Deja News
won't have to remember that old "r.g.b" to search through
in addition to "r.g.b.misc".
The status quo isn't hurting anyone. A r.g.b.misc namechange
isn't particularly going to help anyone. Just leave it be!
--
_____ Isaac Kuo (isaa...@tyrell.net or isaa...@OCF.berkeley.edu)
__|_>o<_|__ As the world looked on ... Earth's fate hung in balance ...
/___________\ The fight for survival ... now begins! ... FINAL BATTLE IN ...
\=\>-----</=/ TOMOBIKI-CHO!
Steve Patterson
In article <4ob5n8$c...@agate.berkeley.edu>, isaa...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Isaac Ji Kuo) says:
>
>Please, therefore, do not put the .misc namechange in any CFV
>until _after_ it has been demonstrated by at least some plausible
>means that a large fraction of _rec.games.board_ users want
>it! (I'd prefer a great majority, but I doubt even a large
>fraction of r.g.b users _want_ a name change to r.g.b.misc.)
>
>Otherwise, leave r.g.b as it is.
The sentiment is seconded. I feel that the benefits incurred by making
what is effectively a cosmetic change are outweighed by the potential
disruption in service.
Rec.games.board isn't broken. Please don't fix it.
---
"Animals have contempt for animal rights; cats don't treasure diversity,
except in a gustatory sense." -- Frederica Mathewes-Green
<BRAG>Creator and maintainer of the Legions of Steel Web Page!</BRAG>
http://www.hookup.net/~losglobl
Petri Juhani Piira
I could support:
rec.games.board.wif and
rec.games.board
But not the .worldinflames and .misc names.
There is no need to rename rec.games.board, it would only inconvenience
people... and the .worldinflames extension looks unappealing to me,
especially because WiF is the standard acronym for the game and
commonly used by the players instead of the whole name.
Petri
Steve MacGregor
Jene tajpis lastatempe Petri Juhani Piira:
| There is no need to rename rec.games.board, it would only inconvenience
| people... and the .worldinflames extension looks unappealing to me,
| especially because WiF is the standard acronym for the game and
| commonly used by the players instead of the whole name.
Sounds about right. Some may complain that upon seeing the newsgroup
name <rec.games.board.wif>, others will post to the group to ask "What is
wif?", only to get the answer, "It's the standard abbreviation for 'World
in Flames'."
But couldn't someone as unfamiliar with the game as a whole as well as
the abbreviation ask, when seeing <rec.games.board.worldinflames>, "Hey,
dudes? What's worldinflames?"
The answer to the question in both instances is really, "It's a board
game that you're not familiar with.
My opinion: "worldinflames" is not a bad tail name, but "wif" is
probably just as good.
--
----------------------------------------------------
All work and no play makes Jack's wife a rich widow.
----------------------------------------------------
Alec Habig
Richard Gadsden <C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>Just because two previous chances to clear up a naming situation
>have passed us by, there is no reason to ignore a third.
There is a _very_ good reason.
Most of the readers of r.g.b whom I've seen post about this don't want it to
happen.
You're the only person I recognize who likes the idea. All of the other people
posting in favor of the rename seem to be news.groups denizens.
A WiF group would be a good idea. I'd hate to see it go down (*) simply
because it's got a rider that's been tacked on by people who never
read the newsgroup anyway.
FWIW, during the discussion of the .marketplace group creation, the idea of a
.misc group was kicked around, and everyone said "blech". This was before the
current Great Misc Crusade that seems to be afflicting us, when the
participation of news.groups in a newgroup discussion served as impartial
moderator rather than Usenet Cabal Enforcer.
Alec
(*) - yes, I know it's a line-item thing, and that people can vote for one and
against the other, but not all voters know this, and human nature would cause
more than a few ballots to be cast throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Markus Stumptner
In article <4ocpt3$4...@globe.indirect.com>, stev...@indirect.com (Steve MacGregor) writes:
> Sounds about right. Some may complain that upon seeing the newsgroup
>name <rec.games.board.wif>, others will post to the group to ask "What is
>wif?", only to get the answer, "It's the standard abbreviation for 'World
>in Flames'."
> But couldn't someone as unfamiliar with the game as a whole as well as
>the abbreviation ask, when seeing <rec.games.board.worldinflames>, "Hey,
>dudes? What's worldinflames?"
> The answer to the question in both instances is really, "It's a board
>game that you're not familiar with.
In fact, the typical response in both cases would probably be to
ask "what is wif?" or "what is worldinflames?" (whichever corresponds
to the name tail) in the new newsgroup itself.
I think that most persons who are involved with WiF to the degree that
they would be explicitly looking for a newsgroup would be familiar with
the acronym anyway.
Colin Douthwaite
James Baranovich (hh...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu) wrote:
>
>In a previous article, Jim...@gnn.com (Jim Riley) wrote:
>
>>It really seems as if the wif proposal is being used as a stalking
>>horse for the .misc re-naming.
><clip>
>>In checking the 1000+ articles on my newsserver for r.g.board, about
>>1% deal with wif (excluding RFD discussion). It is not even in the
>>top 10 among individual games. Yet the wif proposal is being used
>>to carry the .misc renaming, With the huge number of games being
>>discussed in r.g.board, it would be very easy to miss the RFD. On
>>the other hand, someone interested in wif would see the RFD
>>discussion and be more likely to vote in the interest poll.
>A proposal which gives me this same eerie impression but to an even
>greater degree is the sci.engr.chem .miscification.
There are actually at least 3 current RFDs/CFVs that might fit
that category:
sci.engr.chem re-org ( Joshua Halberthal )
misc.computers.forsale.hand-helds.misc ( J.B. Kamens )
rec.games.board re-org ( Richard Gadsden )
Hmm...brings to mind the old James Bond dictum:
" First time is a happenstance.
Second time a coincidence.
Third time is enemy action."
Oh well, at least they are spread over 3 different hierarchies. 8-)
Bye,
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Colin Douthwaite <cf...@southern.co.nz> writes:
> In that case you are demonstrating the same attitude as the RFD author
> of the "rec.games.go" re-org who refused to listen to the readership
> protests about renaming to *.misc.
> The readership responded quite rightly by voting against the entire
> proposals.
If you're going to use that as an example, I think it would be more honest
to also say that there were several other objections to the new newsgroups
which were proposed. There definitely is *not* enough evidence to support
a claim that the entire proposal failed because of the renaming.
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Isaac Ji Kuo <isaa...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
> Recently, rec.arts.anime had its name changed to rec.arts.anime.misc in
> a controverisal re-org which upset many users of r.a.a.*.
And was fully and strongly supported by many other users of raa.*.
> What's most telling is that during the period in which both r.a.a and
> r.a.a.misc existed, the bandwidth level on r.a.a.misc (including Xposts)
> was only a fraction of the bandwidth level on r.a.a (excluding Xposts).
> That means that r.a.a users did _not_ want the name change!
Or it means that new newsgroups take a while to propagate, which they do.
Or it means that all the other new newsgroups which were created at the
same time were drawing off traffic from the .misc group, which they were.
If the readers of rec.games.board don't want the group renamed, they can
certainly vote against it. I think there are strong arguments in favor of
renaming the group. I also don't see the point in trying to draw
parallels to other groups which had different problems and a different
readership, especially since in this case I think you're misrepresenting
the situation with rec.arts.anime.
John_Da...@cup.portal.com
I agree with the other RGB regulars that renaming RGB to .misc is un-called
for, and that if this is voted on at all, it should be in a separate CFV.
John David Galt Visualize monkeys flying out my butt!
Dave Casper
In article <qumzq6s...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU>, Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes...
>In news.groups, Isaac Ji Kuo <isaa...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
>
>If the readers of rec.games.board don't want the group renamed, they can
>certainly vote against it.
..and still be outvoted by a bunch of pocket-protector types from news.groups
with nothing better to do than try imposing their ivory tower theories of
USENET on groups they don't even read. I haven't recognized any regular
participants of r.g.b among the supporters of this change, with the exception
of the proponent, who apparently had his arm twisted to include the renaming
with the reasonable proposal for WiF. According to DejaNews, you, Mr. Allbery,
have never posted anything to r.g.b other than concerning this RFD - what
entitles you or any other outsider to tell us what we should call our group?
When the voting is finished, I'd like to compare the number of posts over the
past year by yes and no voters - I suspect if weighted by the actual usage of
the group, the renaming would fail by 10:1 at least. It seems to me the height
of arrogance to vote on a proposal which intimately concerns a group you
never read.
Maybe someone should propose a renaming of news.groups to something more
descriptive - I can think of a few good candidates...
Dave
d.ca...@cern.ch
Robert Ames
In article <qum3f4k...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU>,
Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>I personally think renaming parent groups is a good idea in general. I
>think it's a *very* good idea in this particular case and intend to vote
>for the renaming.
Do you read rec.games.board.* at all? Why must you be such a
net.busybody and seek to impose your will on people with whom you
don't even exchange messages?
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Dave Casper <cas...@axcrna.cern.ch> writes:
> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes...
>> If the readers of rec.games.board don't want the group renamed, they
>> can certainly vote against it.
> ..and still be outvoted by a bunch of pocket-protector types from
> news.groups with nothing better to do than try imposing their ivory
> tower theories of USENET on groups they don't even read.
History doesn't bear out this conclusion. Every .misc renaming that I've
seen pass had solid support in the group that was being renamed.
> I haven't recognized any regular participants of r.g.b among the
> supporters of this change, with the exception of the proponent, who
> apparently had his arm twisted to include the renaming with the
> reasonable proposal for WiF.
"Apparently" according to whom? Again, if you have any evidence that the
proponent has had his arm twisted or if the proponent thinks he's had his
arm twisted, I'd dearly like to know about it, since that would be a real
problem and one I'd like to see fixed.
> According to DejaNews, you, Mr. Allbery, have never posted anything to
> r.g.b other than concerning this RFD - what entitles you or any other
> outsider to tell us what we should call our group?
First, there do exist people who read groups and don't post to them. This
trend of using DejaNews to determine who reads what groups is absurd. I
read a large number of groups I never post to, and the only way you could
possibly know which ones would be to break into my computer and look at my
.newsrc file.
Second, newsgroups do not exist in a vacuum. Some of us have an on-going
interest in seeing at least some naming consistency across all Big Eight
newsgroups.
> When the voting is finished, I'd like to compare the number of posts
> over the past year by yes and no voters - I suspect if weighted by the
> actual usage of the group, the renaming would fail by 10:1 at least.
While you are spending your time doing that analysis, you should be aware
that the number of lurkers in a newsgroup normally outnumber the number of
posters by at least 1000:1.
> Maybe someone should propose a renaming of news.groups to something more
> descriptive
You're too late. I already have.
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Robert Ames <am...@ican.net> writes:
> Do you read rec.games.board.* at all?
Yes.
And that's the limit to which I'm going to satisfy your curiousity about
my private activities on this thread, Mr. Ames. Either rebutt my
arguments or don't; which newsgroups I read are not relevant to my
arguments.
Stephen Graham
In article <4od28v$o...@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
Alec Habig <aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu> wrote:
>You're the only person I recognize who likes the idea. All of the other people
>posting in favor of the rename seem to be news.groups denizens.
I'm also in favor of renaming to r.g.b.misc. While it inconveniences
current readership briefly, it has long term benefits. Consistency in
names across a hierarchy make it simpler for many people to find the
group they're interested in.
--
Stephen Graham
gra...@ee.washington.edu
gra...@cs.washington.edu uw-beaver!june!graham
Adam Huby
In article <4oiqnv$1...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
Stephen Graham <gra...@maxwell.ee.washington.edu> wrote:
>In article <4od28v$o...@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
>Alec Habig <aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu> wrote:
>>You're the only person I recognize who likes the idea. All of the other people
>>posting in favor of the rename seem to be news.groups denizens.
>
>I'm also in favor of renaming to r.g.b.misc. While it inconveniences
>current readership briefly, it has long term benefits. Consistency in
>names across a hierarchy make it simpler for many people to find the
>group they're interested in.
FWIW, I agree with this; consistency is a Good Thing (TM). I'll be voting
in favour of the .misc rename (and abstaining on wif).
Adam
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
One day, my son, these views will be Crosfield's (but for the moment they're
mine, all mine).
--
Adam Huby Crosfield Electronics Ltd Hemel Hempstead HP2 7RH U.K.
uucp: a...@crosfield.co.uk
phone: +44 1442 230000 ext 5251 or +44 1442 345251
fax: +44 1442 343362 telex: 827530 CROSEL G
Steve Patterson
In article <qum91ea...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU>, Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> says:
>
>Second, newsgroups do not exist in a vacuum. Some of us have an on-going
>interest in seeing at least some naming consistency across all Big Eight
>newsgroups.
OK. I'll bite. What the farging heck are the grand, magnificent reasons
to rename the group to *.misc? I can't see any, and can only see the
interruptions in service and inevitable confusion that plague every
group shuffle I've witnessed.
How would a renaming of rec.games.board be sufficiently benificial to
offset these difficulties?
Psychohist
Russ Allbery says, regarding a suggestion that he is not a regular denizen
of r.g.b:
First, there do exist people who read
groups and don't post to them. This
trend of using DejaNews to determine who
reads what groups is absurd. I
read a large number of groups I never post
to, and the only way you could
possibly know which ones would be to break
into my computer and look at my
.newsrc file.
On the other hand Russ notably does not go on to say that he actually
reads r.g.b regularly. (Obviously he has read some of the posts to it,
specifically the ones in this thread.)
The traffic on r.g.b is not high enough that a split would normally be
looked upon kindly. Furthermore a wif/misc split would be incredibly
uneven - wif posts constitute no more than about half a dozen posts a day,
not the scores or hundreds that normally justify a new news group. This
causes me to wonder if the wif/misc proposal is getting more favorable
treatment solely because of the rename of r.g.b to r.g.b.misc.
Warren J. Dew
Alec Habig
Psychohist <psych...@aol.com> wrote:
>The traffic on r.g.b is not high enough that a split would normally be
>looked upon kindly. Furthermore a wif/misc split would be incredibly
>uneven - wif posts constitute no more than about half a dozen posts a day,
>not the scores or hundreds that normally justify a new news group. This
>causes me to wonder if the wif/misc proposal is getting more favorable
>treatment solely because of the rename of r.g.b to r.g.b.misc.
The proposal for a WiF newsgroup is a good one. Read the RFD. There is a very
active WiF mailing list that wishes to make the move to a newsgroup instead of
remaining as a list. The fact that this list exists is what keeps the WiF
presence on r.g.b so low.
Unfortunately, the renaming of r.g.b itself is useless. Luckily, we can vote
for the good proposal, and against the lousy one.
Alec Habig
Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>In news.groups, Robert Ames <am...@ican.net> writes:
>
>> Do you read rec.games.board.* at all?
>
>Yes.
Note that Russ reading the post he respinded to qualified as reading r.g.b.
"at all", for the literal minded amongst us :)
>And that's the limit to which I'm going to satisfy your curiousity about
>my private activities on this thread, Mr. Ames. Either rebutt my
>arguments or don't; which newsgroups I read are not relevant to my
>arguments.
Your argument has been in favor of miscification for consistancies purpose. No
one has argued that a rename would not help it be more consistant, or that
consistancy in general is a good thing. Thus, that part of your argument
cannot be rebutted.
However, the arguments against a rename boil down to a pretty solid "don't fix
what ain't broken" from the readers of the newsgroup in question. That, in our
minds, outweighs what non-readers think. It's our opinion. If you were a
reader of the newsgroup, your opinion would be added in and given more weight.
That's why who reads what is important to this thread - the opinions of those
who actually give a damn SHOULD be given more weight, and this discussion is
entirely about opinion.
Oh, bogus stats about lurkers don't help matters. Those stats are generally
gathered from news server stats that count any hit on a newsgroup as a reader.
Lurkers weigh in at a hell of a lot less than 1000:1. Even if we say 10:1
(still a gross overestimate), I'd opine that the people who actually contribute
posts to a discussion should be listened too more carefully than those who
merely passively absorb what's there. After all, if you care enough to
contribute, you obviously have more at stake in the discussion.
Unfortunately, each Usenet Cabal vote is weighted exactly the same as each
r.g.b reader vote when it comes down to the CFV. Not that there's any
practical way to avoid this, but it kinda sucks anyway.
Rick Heli
Agreed. And would rec.games.board.wif be so awful? Save some of us a lot
of typing... :)
Colin Douthwaite
Sirilyan (siri...@io.com) wrote:
>"If there are subgroups, the parent group should have the .misc name to tell
>the reader in no uncertain terms that there are subgroups. Since we are (if
>successful) creating subgroups in the rgb.* hierarchy, the parent group
>should have the .misc name."
[...big snip...]
>-Sirilyan "Vote NO on renaming misc to misc.misc!" @io.com.
misc.misc already exists and is unlikely to be renamed to misc.misc.misc
until the traffic volume in misc.misc requires it to be split.
Since you seem determined to continue the propaganda/rationales for
renaming of parent newsgroups, allow me to introduce some different
views on the matter. My apologies if you have seen them before.
Perhaps the fairest appraisal is by Bengt Larssen who showed that it
is all a matter of opinion.
And in the sci.chem debate several sysadmins advised Joseph Merola
that the renamings of foo.bar to foo.bar.misc were not necessary.
The arguments are given below:
====================================================================
From: wak...@pinn.net (Tom Wakelyn)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.astro,news.groups
Subject: the misc goes on
Date: 6 Jul 1995 15:52:21 GMT
Message-ID: <3th0rl$7...@everest.pinn.net>
[...some preamble deleted for brevity...]
The group-advice people and their apparent hero, David Lawrence,
moderator of news.announce.newgroups, (for some reason they call him
tale) have been asked for specific cases where not using the misc
addition causes software problems to no avail. The situation
already exists. There are sub-groups to sci.physics and sci.astro
and no problems. Ask your system administrator if his software is
confused by these sub-groups.
One of our chemists asked the MODERATOR for the reason for changing
sci.chem to sci.chem.misc. His answer follows:
> There are both administrative and namespace consistency aspects for
> doing so. Briefly: it simplifies news system administration for
> people taking just that topic area, reduces cross-posting with the
> hierarchy some, lessens the perception by some peple (sic) that some
> topics are being "relegated to a subgroup", and keeps more clear the
> distinction of hierarchy vs group in the namespace model. It
> emphasizes to some sites taking just the parent group that a change
> has been made. This could be very important to the way their feeds
> are configured, especially with the advent of INN and its break from
> the B/C News hierarchal feeding structure. Finally, news server
> filesystem performance is better when the kernel routine that looks up
> pathnames doesn't have to search a directory full of articles to find
> the subdirectory for an article posted to a subgroup."
(The logic doesn't make sense to me either. TW)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is Bengt Larssen's response:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ben...@maths.lth.se (Bengt Larsson)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.astro,news.groups
Subject: Re: the misc goes on
Date: 7 Jul 1995 02:12:20 GMT
Organization: Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden
Lines: 97
Message-ID: <3ti564$r...@nic.lth.se>
In news.groups, wak...@pinn.net (Tom Wakelyn) wrote:
[a summary at end]
>One of our chemists asked the MODERATOR for the reason for changing
>sci.chem to sci.chem.misc. His answer follows:
>
>> There are both administrative and namespace consistency aspects for
>> doing so. Briefly: it simplifies news system administration for
>> people taking just that topic area,
For those who are using INN.
>> reduces cross-posting with the hierarchy some,
Well, it would be for the readers to have opinions on
the effects of that.
>> lessens the perception by some peple (sic) that some topics
>> are being "relegated to a subgroup",
Ditto, ie opinions differ.
>> and keeps more clear the
>> distinction of hierarchy vs group in the namespace model.
Ie, it's neater. I also think it's neater, but after all, that is
preference, not fact.
>> It
>> emphasizes to some sites taking just the parent group that a change
>> has been made.
It also signals to readers that a change has been made.
>>This could be very important to the way their feeds
>> are configured, especially with the advent of INN and its break from
>> the B/C News hierarchal feeding structure.
Same as mentioned at top.
>> Finally, news server
>> filesystem performance is better when the kernel routine that looks up
>> pathnames doesn't have to search a directory full of articles to find
>> the subdirectory for an article posted to a subgroup."
Depends on how many readers you have. Every access to a message,
whether open, create, or remove would cause a search through
a directory with a lot of files. Since the non-leaf groups
are in a minority anyway, I doubt it makes that much difference.
UUNET, and other sites with lots of feeds and few readers
would be extreme cases.
Summary of advantages:
For readers:
- It may cut down on crossposting between the "parent" group
(the "main" group) and subgroups, if this is desired.
- It signals to all readers that a reorganization has been made,
particulary when the "parent" newsgroup is removed.
- It makes it clearer that the .misc group is for topics not
covered in other subgroups, if that is what you want.
For admins:
- The newsfeed entry in INN becomes shorter, ie "news.group.*"
instead of "news.group,news.group.*".
- You will more likely notice the change in group structure,
especially when the base group is removed. Ie the same reason as
for readers.
- It saves a percentage of kernel lookups, particulary for sites with
lots of feeds and few readers.
- It's neater if you look at the spool directories manually
and work with the files there.
Disadvantages for readers:
- In some cases, a ".misc" group may not make a lot of sense,
ie soc.women.misc, soc.women.lesbian-and-bi, especially if created at
once, may sound funny from the reader perspective.
- In some cases the parent newsgroup really isn't "misc",
for example comp.arch has retained pretty much the same character
over the years, despite there being created other comp.arch.* groups.
The subgroups of comp.arch cover mostly new traffic (though on
related topics) and are not split-offs.
Disadvantages for admins:
None except as in the role of readers.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Merola's report on Sys Admin's views on *.misc renamings:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jme...@vt.edu (Joseph S. Merola)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Renaming foo -> foo.misc
Date: Tue, 30 May 95 21:55:13 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Chemistry, Virginia Tech
Lines: 65
Message-ID: <jmerola.1...@news.vt.edu>
[...deletia for brevity...]
Before you dismiss me as a clueless newbie who just doesn't
understand, I have had email correspondence with a number of
administrators, including the one here at my site. They have all
said that the *.misc renaming is not necessary, the software (at
least the software they have) handles files and directories in the
same directory with no problem at all. The best comment was that
the time spent on debating the issue will outweigh _by orders of
magnitude_ any possible time saving by renaming all foo. groups to
foo.misc. I suggest that, especially for the administrator at my
site, you don't characterize these people as not understanding the
sysadmin side of things.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph S. Merola
Director of Graduate Education
Department of Chemistry Internet: JME...@VT.EDU
Virginia Tech Voice : (703) 231-4510
Blacksburg VA 24061-0212 FAX : (703) 231-3255
====================================================================
Colin Douthwaite
David Seal (ds...@armltd.co.uk) wrote:
>Incidentally, before you put me down as an obsessed "miscist": I am
>actually considering voting against this .misc renaming. But for my
>own reasons, and they do *not* include a general principle that
>"renaming parent newsgroups is a Bad Thing".
From past observations I would never put you down as an obsessed
"anything". :-)
What are your reasons against renaming rec.games.board ? Come on
now don't be coy ! 8-)
Bye,
Colin Douthwaite
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) wrote:
>In news.groups, Colin Douthwaite <cf...@southern.co.nz> writes:
>
>> In that case you are demonstrating the same attitude as the RFD author
>> of the "rec.games.go" re-org who refused to listen to the readership
>> protests about renaming to *.misc.
>
>> The readership responded quite rightly by voting against the entire
>> proposals.
>If you're going to use that as an example, I think it would be more honest
>to also say that there were several other objections to the new newsgroups
>which were proposed. There definitely is *not* enough evidence to support
>a claim that the entire proposal failed because of the renaming.
Agreed, but the RFD discussion for this RFD has shown very little
support for the "worldinflames" subgroup...nor did the support for
the rec.games.go.* subgroups. In both RFDs there was/is overwhelming
dislike of the renaming to *.misc and in both RFDs the
authors/proponents are ignoring the response to the RFD discussion -
that alone is against the purposes of an RFD discussion.
In my view there is a close parallel between the rec.games.go episode
and this one for rec.games.board.
I'm not sure of the rec.games.go RFD but I know with certainty that
this rec.games.board RFD is being used as a Stalking Horse for a
*.misc renaming...as has already been suggested by Mr. Riley ( I
think ). Whether Group-advice have been involved in this business or
not I am unsure but there are indications that this is so.
You have repeatedly asked for evidence of pressure to rename since
September 1995 - this may well be it !
Games are certainly being played with this RFD and it is _not_
the Board Game " World In Flames ". :-(
Bye,
Max Frank Natzet
cf...@southern.co.nz writes:
> Agreed, but the RFD discussion for this RFD has shown very little
> support for the "worldinflames" subgroup...nor did the support for
Nobody is arguing against it, the conversation has turned into
an arguement about renaming the root group. There are mailing
lists full of people who are about to loose their list and need
a new home. The creation of a .wif group is pretty much going
to happen I believe. The real issue is the renaming rgb.
--
Max Natzet, Combat Botanist
North American Combat Botany Institute
Wallops Flight Facility
Wallops Island, VA 23337
Psychohist
Just my two cents on a few of the (news.announce.newgroups?) moderator's
factors for the 'misc' rename:
>> lessens the perception by some peple (sic) that some topics
>> are being "relegated to a subgroup",
The WIF proposal basically admits that they want to create a subgroup of
r.g.b and not a group of equal standing. The wording of the RFD refers to
"rec.games.board.general" in a way that makes it pretty clear that the
RFD's author proposed this name first, then changed it to
rec.games.board.misc for administrative reasons. I suspect the readers of
r.g.b would object less to appending "general" than "misc".
>> It
>> emphasizes to some sites taking just the parent group that a change
>> has been made.
But in fact, little if any change is proposed for r.g.b. The proposal, as
I understand it, is basically to form a wif group out of the wif
_mailing_list_, and not out of the few wif posts that appear on r.g.b.
Given this goal, my feeling is that the proposer should have only
suggested a new wif group, perhaps at the rec.games level where chess and
go are, rather than at the r.g.b level. Since I don't play wif, I would
normally abstain on such a proposal. Unfortunately, he also proposed a
rename of r.g.b, as well as a charter for it that was not very completely
thought out. As a result, if they both come to a vote, I'll feel
obligated to vote against both proposals, in an attempt to encourage any
future game specific proposals to omit messing with r.g.b.
Warren Dew
Steve MacGregor
Jene tajpis lastatempe Russ Allbery:
| If you're going to use that as an example, I think it would be more honest
| to also say that there were several other objections to the new newsgroups
| which were proposed. There definitely is *not* enough evidence to support
| a claim that the entire proposal failed because of the renaming.
Yes -- as I recall, the split-off group was to be <rec.games.go.servers>,
to discuss and argue about the Internet Go Server, and other places on
the 'Net to play Go. Part of the proposal was to rename <rec.games.go> by
adding ".misc" to the end.
It failed, because too few people saw the necessity for the new group.
Steve MacGregor
Jene tajpis lastatempe Adam Huby:
| FWIW, I agree with this; consistency is a Good Thing (TM). I'll be voting
| in favour of the .misc rename (and abstaining on wif).
Excuse me, but it would be =just= as consistant if there were =no=
groups with a ".misc" suffix.
I'll be voting "aye" on the new group, because there appears to be a
need for it, and "nay" on renaming a group whose name is fine just as it is.
--
==----= Steve MacGregor {GCS$(AT) -d+ !H s:++ g++ p2+
([.] [.]) Phoenix, AZ au a50 w+ v+* C+++ U P? !L N+++
-----oOOo--(_)--oOOo---------------- !W M? po+(++) Y+ t-(+) 5++ j+
R(-) %pbm++++$ G' tv++ b+++ !D B- e++ n+ h+ f+ r+>+++ n- %eo+++ y+++}
Matthew Daly
In article <4od28v$o...@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu (Alec Habig) writes:
>Richard Gadsden <C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>Just because two previous chances to clear up a naming situation
>>have passed us by, there is no reason to ignore a third.
>
>There is a _very_ good reason.
>
>Most of the readers of r.g.b whom I've seen post about this don't want it to
>happen.
>
>posting in favor of the rename seem to be news.groups denizens.
The most delicious irony, of course, is that we aren't discussing this
on news.groups.misc. It seems that the denizens want to put other
people's houses in order but not their own.... [sic]
>A WiF group would be a good idea. I'd hate to see it go down (*) simply
>because it's got a rider that's been tacked on by people who never
>read the newsgroup anyway.
Particularly because it may be that the wif is just a Trojan Horse
set up to cram an unwanted miscification on us. I heard the statistic
that as many as 90% of the votes are expected to be for one half
or the other ... is it not possible that this is a sign that there
should be two separate ballots?
>(*) - yes, I know it's a line-item thing, and that people can vote for one and
>against the other, but not all voters know this, and human nature would cause
>more than a few ballots to be cast throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Indeed. As the author's view is "if you don't like it, vote against
it!", I don't doubt that many voters will do this ... on both sides
of the ballot. Sensitivity to the rec.games.board readers would be
ideal, of course, but who could fault someone who repaid callousness
with callousness?
Steffan O'Sullivan
This argument has been gone through on many groups. Last year, at
least one group rebelled - and won. The proposers of
soc.women.lesbian-and-bi were told by "advisors" that they had to
include a proposal to rename soc.women to soc.women.misc, and they
said, "No way. We don't have to." Sure enough, soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
passed without having to rename soc.women.
We can do the same here, and I strongly recommend it. We don't
need no stinkin' .misc.
--
Steffan O'Sullivan s...@io.com
----------------- http://oz.plymouth.edu/~gaming/ ------------------
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity." -W. B. Yeats on Usenet
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Matthew Daly <da...@PPD.Kodak.COM> writes:
> The most delicious irony, of course, is that we aren't discussing this
> on news.groups.misc. It seems that the denizens want to put other
> people's houses in order but not their own.... [sic]
Umm, no, it's just an indication that the news.groups reorg, which is
underway, has been delayed for some other reasons.
> Particularly because it may be that the wif is just a Trojan Horse set
> up to cram an unwanted miscification on us.
I think it's quite clear from the statements of the proponent that this is
not true. Look, I think .misc is a good idea, and I realize that you
don't. Please let's debate things on that level; the .worldinflames group
is a different matter.
> I heard the statistic that as many as 90% of the votes are expected to
> be for one half or the other
That hasn't historically been the case.
Mike Joslyn
I'm not sure I understand all the "Sturm und drang."
Rec.Games.Board implies a newgroup about board games.
Rec.Games.Misc implies practically any kind of game.
Renaming the group would be the triumph of administration over
clarity.
Russ Allbery
Steffan O'Sullivan <s...@io.com> writes:
> This argument has been gone through on many groups. Last year, at least
> one group rebelled - and won. The proposers of soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
> were told by "advisors" that they had to include a proposal to rename
> soc.women to soc.women.misc, and they said, "No way. We don't have to."
> Sure enough, soc.women.lesbian-and-bi passed without having to rename
> soc.women.
And the proponent of rec.games.board.worldinflames was *not* told that he
"had" to rename rec.games.board. He was told that we think it's a good
idea and recommend it, and that advice he was free to either take or
leave.
Petri Juhani Piira
In article <4omnrg$t...@orm.southern.co.nz>,
>Agreed, but the RFD discussion for this RFD has shown very little
>support for the "worldinflames" subgroup...nor did the support for
>dislike of the renaming to *.misc and in both RFDs the
>authors/proponents are ignoring the response to the RFD discussion -
>that alone is against the purposes of an RFD discussion.
Yes. It is strange that there is no discussion about this.
Has anyone supported .worldinflames?
>I'm not sure of the rec.games.go RFD but I know with certainty that
>this rec.games.board RFD is being used as a Stalking Horse for a
>*.misc renaming...as has already been suggested by Mr. Riley ( I
You might be correct. WiF is a minority subject in rec.games.board,
there can be days or even weeks without a single WiF post.
And it is very strange the name is .worldinflames, instead of .wif
On r.g.b games are often discussed by acronyms. A&A for Axis & Allies,
SFB for Star Fleet Battles etc.
If this proposal passes, then we'll possibly have (for symmetry):
rec.games.board.starfleetbattles instead of rec.games.board.sfb
rec.games.board.advancedsquadleader instead of rec.games.board.asl
rec.games.board.advancedthirdreich instead of rec.games.board.a3r
etc.
And there exists currently the group (dead?) rec.games.board.ce, which
would have to be renamed into rec.games.board.cosmicencounter if we
insist on not using acronyms.
I find the long names unwieldy and ugly...
Petri
Wgreview
Mike Joslyn <MRJo...@Concentric.net> wrote :
It's even worse than that -- there already IS a group called
rec.games.misc!
Having one group called r.g.misc and another r.g.b.misc would be a
nightmare.
I pointed this out via e-mail to the WIF proposer, and he basically
ignored the
problem when writing up the RFD proposal.
Michael Keller, World Game Review, 1747 Little Creek Drive,
Baltimore, MD 21207-5230, <Wgre...@aol.com>
Dave Casper
In article <4on1r9$8...@nntp.hut.fi>, pp...@alpha.hut.fi (Petri Juhani Piira) writes...
>In article <4omnrg$t...@orm.southern.co.nz>,
>Colin Douthwaite <cf...@southern.co.nz> wrote:
>>Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) wrote:
>>>In news.groups, Colin Douthwaite <cf...@southern.co.nz> writes:
>>In both RFDs there was/is overwhelming
>>dislike of the renaming to *.misc and in both RFDs the
>>authors/proponents are ignoring the response to the RFD discussion -
>>that alone is against the purposes of an RFD discussion.
>
> Yes. It is strange that there is no discussion about this.
I have the feeling that "the fix is in" on the renaming. A bunch of
people who don't post to or read the group regular will vote yes,
and unless we have a very alert r.g.b electorate, we may have it
forced down our throats..
> Has anyone supported .worldinflames?
I supported it. I believe it is so non-controversial that nobody
bothers to comment. It would be unfortunate if this reasonable
proposal were compromised and went down in flames (for lack of a
better term) due to the underhanded attempt to rename the group
at the same time.
>>I'm not sure of the rec.games.go RFD but I know with certainty that
>>this rec.games.board RFD is being used as a Stalking Horse for a
>>*.misc renaming...as has already been suggested by Mr. Riley ( I
>
> You might be correct. WiF is a minority subject in rec.games.board,
> there can be days or even weeks without a single WiF post.
This is because there is a very high-volume mailing list, which is threatened
with extinction. Because of the high volume and possible loss of their
mailing list site, they prefer to go to a news group. According to the
RFD, they have about 200 members and a volume of 50 messages a day.
(The existence of a mailing list is also why you don't see A3R discussed
much on r.g.b; mercifully the volume of our list is considerably lower,
despite have a few more members than WiF...)
Dave
d.ca...@cern.ch
No representation without participation: Just say "No" to renaming r.g.b!
Steve MacGregor
Jene tajpis lastatempe Petri Juhani Piira:
| And there exists currently the group (dead?) rec.games.board.ce, which
| would have to be renamed into rec.games.board.cosmicencounter if we
| insist on not using acronyms.
| I find the long names unwieldy and ugly...
And unnecessary.
If you see a group with a name like <rec.games.board.btfsplk>, you
can pretty well guess that "btfsplk" is a boardgame. You may want to
tune in and find out what kind of boardgame it is, or maybe not.
Tail-names are bound to be a bit puzzling to anyone not interested in
the general topic. [ref: the "boatanchors" discussion]
--
---------------------------------------------------------
Whom are you going to call? GRAMMAR BUSTERS!!!
---------------------------------------------------------
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Petri Juhani Piira <pp...@alpha.hut.fi> writes:
> And it is very strange the name is .worldinflames, instead of .wif
I don't find that at all strange, given that a new player of the game is
likely, when looking for posts about it, to search for "flames" or "world"
and may never think to try WIF. WIF may work fine for those who already
know what the group's about, but it's pretty bad for those who don't.
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Steve Patterson <spatt...@wwdc.com> writes:
> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> says:
>> Second, newsgroups do not exist in a vacuum. Some of us have an
>> on-going interest in seeing at least some naming consistency across all
>> Big Eight newsgroups.
> OK. I'll bite. What the farging heck are the grand, magnificent
> reasons to rename the group to *.misc? I can't see any, and can only
> see the interruptions in service and inevitable confusion that plague
> every group shuffle I've witnessed.
> How would a renaming of rec.games.board be sufficiently benificial to
> offset these difficulties?
Here are the reasons in my mind which are relevent to the current
situation in rec.games.board:
* The group is already a .misc group in everything but name; most of the
current traffic is discussion of miscellaneous board games. Renaming
the group to reflect its actual content would make things clearer.
* It would be consistent with other hierarchies, and consistency overall
makes the namespace more usable for people and makes it clearer upon
first glance which group discusses what.
* It helps with a variety of problems in organization and finding
things. For example, it's unclear to some users when, given groups
named rec.games.board.marketplace and rec.games.board, whether
marketplace postings should be posted to both newsgroups or just to
.marketplace. .misc also makes it much more obvious that there are
additional newsgroups, depending on the interface one uses for reading
news. (And there have been several for-sale ads posted to rgb over the
past few days, as well as one on Cosmic Encounter; I'm not sure if a
renaming would have helped that or not.)
* It maintains a distinction between hierarchy and group in the newsgroup
structure. Whether or not you consider that important depends largely
on your view of Usenet's organizational structure.
* It solves a wide variety of problems on the technical end of news
servers, all of which I would classify under "annoyances." Those
include making it easier to administer INN feeds, maintaining the
distinction between hierarchies and newsgroups in the file system
structure which is a big help if one is working in the spool area by
hand or with quick scripts, and slightly helping overall news server
performance since the server doesn't have to search through a large
directory for subdirectories when someone accesses the subgroup.
There are a couple more reasons which would be more relevent were this the
first reorganization, but which still apply to some lesser extent:
* It makes it quite clear to readers that there are now more groups in
the hierarchy that they may wish to read.
* It makes it clear to administrators that rec.games.board is now a
hierarchy rather than just a single group, making it more likely that
those administrators who do not automatically add new newsgroups will
add all of the hierarchy rather than just the root groop.
Keep in mind that I'm trying to look at the issue from a long-term
perspective. Renaming a group does indeed produce some temporary pain,
but the group is likely to exist for a good decade in the future and it's
highly unlikely that it would ever need to be renamed again. I think the
increase in clarity in the long run is worth it.
And, for the record, I have gone through newsgroup renamings of other
groups before from the reader's perspective, the largest of which was
probably the rec.games.deckmaster => rec.games.trading-cards.* renaming.
I have a good idea exactly what problems are involved, exactly what steps
are likely to be necessary, and how much trouble the whole thing actually
ends up being. It really isn't that bad overall. There are usually a
handful of people who have to contact their sysadmins to get them to add
the new groups, a few people end up volunteering to post a periodic FAQ
about the renaming and e-mail people who have trouble, and things are a
bit hectic for a month or two, but then everything settles down nicely.
Jeffery S. Jones
On 31-May-96 11:26:29, Psychohist <psych...@aol.com> wrote:
>Just my two cents on a few of the (news.announce.newgroups?)
>moderator's factors for the 'misc' rename:
>>> lessens the perception by some peple (sic) that some topics
>>> are being "relegated to a subgroup",
>The WIF proposal basically admits that they want to create a subgroup
>of r.g.b and not a group of equal standing. The wording of the RFD
>refers to "rec.games.board.general" in a way that makes it pretty clear
>that the RFD's author proposed this name first, then changed it to
>rec.games.board.misc for administrative reasons. I suspect the readers
>of r.g.b would object less to appending "general" than "misc".
I could see _adding_ a new group, called *.misc, but I don't see a
reason to eliminate the general group in the process. There are a lot
of newsgroups which have *.misc attachments but retain the main
grouping. I think that as long as the charter remains clear, there will
be no problem, but I don't see why you'd try to eliminate an existing
group in the process.
>>> It
>>> emphasizes to some sites taking just the parent group that a change
>>> has been made.
>But in fact, little if any change is proposed for r.g.b. The proposal,
>as I understand it, is basically to form a wif group out of the wif
>_mailing_list_, and not out of the few wif posts that appear on r.g.b.
>Given this goal, my feeling is that the proposer should have only
>suggested a new wif group, perhaps at the rec.games level where chess
>and go are, rather than at the r.g.b level. Since I don't play wif, I
>would normally abstain on such a proposal. Unfortunately, he also
>proposed a rename of r.g.b, as well as a charter for it that was not
>very completely thought out. As a result, if they both come to a vote,
>I'll feel obligated to vote against both proposals, in an attempt to
>encourage any future game specific proposals to omit messing with
>r.g.b.
Creating a newsgroup to replace a mailing list is a quite reasonable
request, and certainly cannot hurt. Making it as a subgroup of r.g.b.
makes sense, since it falls into the category of board gaming which
r.g.b. covers, but is obviously more specific. This would attempt to
make any future subgroups also part of r.g.b. We could justify a *.misc
group being added, when the topic of a post isn't of general interest.
But will people really use a r.g.b.misc when r.g.b remains for general
postings?
Is there some sort of usenet "political" push to make _all_ groups
with subgroups have a *.misc group for some reason? If so, why not try
to do it globally, rather than locally, to every single group?
But I really don't understand why rec.games.board is any less clear a
name for the main group than the same with .misc added? Especially when
making the change will inconvenience a lot of people, require massive
changed to web page references, FAQs, etc.
--
*-__________________________ | *Starfire* | _________________________-*
Jeff Jones email:jef...@execpc.com *//* Amiga Lives! |Born
*TFG* *Starfire* Design Studio *\\//* 1985-1994, |again 1995!
--
Colin Douthwaite
John_Da...@cup.portal.com wrote:
>I agree with the other RGB regulars that renaming RGB to .misc is un-called
>for, and that if this is voted on at all, it should be in a separate CFV.
Thank you very much indeed for that John.
I think that _ALL_ renamings/rmgroupings should be in separate
RFD/CFVs and _ALL_ discussion pertaining to renamings and/or
rmgroupings should take place in the affected newsgroup(s)...
(with crossposts to news.groups).
That would reduce a lot of the acrimony which continues ad infinitum
in RFD after RFD ad nauseam.
Bye,
Colin Douthwaite
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) wrote:
>In news.groups, Isaac Ji Kuo <isaa...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
>
>> Recently, rec.arts.anime had its name changed to rec.arts.anime.misc in
>> a controverisal re-org which upset many users of r.a.a.*.
> And was fully and strongly supported by many other users of raa.*.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^
Where is your evidence for that very emphatic statement ? Do you
perhaps mean Stephanie da Silva and Brian Edmonds ?
They constitute "many" ? How ?
> What's most telling is that during the period in which both r.a.a and
> r.a.a.misc existed, the bandwidth level on r.a.a.misc (including Xposts)
> was only a fraction of the bandwidth level on r.a.a (excluding Xposts).
> That means that r.a.a users did _not_ want the name change!
Or it means that new newsgroups take a while to propagate, which they do.
Or it means that all the other new newsgroups which were created at the
same time were drawing off traffic from the .misc group, which they were.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
And there precisely lies the serious flaw in the *.misc argument.
The other subgroups should have been drawing off traffic from
the original "rec.arts.anime" newsgroup...they were not !
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The main "anime" traffic did not move to the *.misc group until the
rec,arts.anime parent group was destroyed on many access sites by
the rmgroup control message. The choice had been removed from
the anime readerships.
The *.misc group is usually for "anything else that does not fit
into other subgroups" that was not the case with rec.arts.anime.misc
as was pointed out during the RFD discussion. The proponent declined
to address the issue that rec.arts.anime should not be renamed...the
RFD discussion showed why...i.e. pursuit of an ideology about
renaming; re-orgs; hierarchies and non-terminal newsgroups. No
consideration was given to those readers of rec.arts.anime who
argued, in the RFD discussion, against the renaming.
> If the readers of rec.games.board don't want the group renamed,
> they can certainly vote against it.
This is the usual "boilerplate" response of the pro-Miscists every
time there is protest at including a renaming in an RFD. It almost
ranks with " Your XXX is broken get another XXX ".
It is always the cop-out used against issuing a revised 2nd RFD
with the *.misc renaming omitted. The RFD period is supposed to
allow for that and people are told to speak up at that time and not
at the CFV stage when things are set in concrete.
What happens when people speak out during RFDs against the *.misc
clause ? All too often they get this reply:
" If the readers of XXX don't want the group renamed, they can
certainly vote against it. "
Further protest usually results in RFD proponents/authors saying
they will not alter their RFDs...end of discussion and they proceed
to CFV against all opposition !
Wonderful ? In the spirit of the pre-RFD/RFD/CFV procedures ?
It most certainly is not !
The proponent of this rec.games.board.worldinflames RFD has been
asked publicly to remove the *.misc renaming and he has publicly
replied that he is not going to do so ! And all despite the almost
unanimous disapproval of the renaming by those who have entered the
discussion.
You yourself are a member of Usenet Group-advice and although you
will no doubt claim your views on this RFD are purely personal those
views are strongly representative of Group-advice thinking on *.misc
renamings because you say right here:
> I think there are strong arguments in favor of renaming the group.
Users of rec.games.board obviously do not agree with you.
and...in an earlier posting:
Message-ID: <qum4tpb...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU> Date: 20 May 1996
Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote in response to Jim Riley:
>> Would tale and group-advice approve a 2nd RFD that eliminated the
>> .misc renaming?
> Yes. While we wouldn't be all that happy about it, since we by
> and large as a group consider renaming parent groups so that they
> fit into the hierarchy a Good Thing, it is the option of the
> proponent whether or not to include a renaming in any given proposal.
and...
> I also don't see the point in trying to draw parallels to other
> groups which had different problems and a different readership,
> especially since in this case I think you're misrepresenting the
> situation with rec.arts.anime.
Oh come now...the issue of renaming/rmgrouping of parent newsgroups
is common to every RFD/CFV where the renaming clause gets embedded
into the RFD.
Misrepresentation ? I think not.
My conception, rightly or wrongly, is that you are signalling to the
proponent of the RFD for "rec.games.board.worldinflames" that both
you personally _and_ Usenet Group-advice are very supportive of the
inclusion of the renaming of rec.games board in his RFD...despite
the RFD discussion itself showing almost unanimous disapproval of
the *.misc renaming.
Now exactly why do we have an RFD discussion period and exactly why
should the disapproval of the *.misc renaming be ignored ?
Oh yes...I forgot...
" If the readers of XXX don't want the group renamed, they can
certainly vote against it. "
Where XXX = rec.board.games ! Next XXX...<enter RFD here>.
Bye,
From: Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu>
Newsgroups: news.groups,rec.games.board
Subject: Re: RFD: rec.games.board.{worldinflames, misc}
Date: 20 May 1996 02:44:35 -0700
Message-ID: <qum4tpb...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU>
In news.groups, Jim Riley <Jim...@gnn.com> writes:
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> In news.groups, Alec Habig <aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu> writes:
>>> Agreed. If we make a .misc, then we'd also have to rename a lot of
>>> other groups to fit the heirarchy.
>> What on earth are you talking about?
> If we're going to play a place for everything, everything in its place.
> AND that is exactly what this .misc naming is about, then
> rec.games.chess.* should be renamed to rec.games.board.chess.*, likewise
> with the backgammon and diplomacy groups.
While I must admit I wouldn't object strenuously to that eventually
happening, I think it's likely to be rather politically untenable at
the moment. In any event, renaming rec.games.board to
rec.games.board.misc certainly does *not* require you to rename any
other newsgroups.
Most early newsgroup naming mistakes are corrected a little bit at a
time when there's an opportunity, not all at once. (And yes, I am
aware that not everyone would consider rec.games.board as opposed to
rec.games.board.misc a naming mistake.)
> Would tale and group-advice approve a 2nd RFD that eliminated the .misc
> renaming?
Yes. While we wouldn't be all that happy about it, since we by and
large as a group consider renaming parent groups so that they fit
into the hierarchy a Good Thing, it is the option of the proponent
whether or not to include a renaming in any given proposal.
Russ Allbery
>> In news.groups, Isaac Ji Kuo <isaa...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
>>> Recently, rec.arts.anime had its name changed to rec.arts.anime.misc in
>>> a controverisal re-org which upset many users of r.a.a.*.
>> And was fully and strongly supported by many other users of raa.*.
> Where is your evidence for that very emphatic statement ? Do you
> perhaps mean Stephanie da Silva and Brian Edmonds ? They constitute
> "many" ? How ?
Colin, please keep in mind that I know and regularly talk to a number of
the raa.* regulars. Off the top of my head, in addition to Stephanie and
Brian, I know that MegaZone (moderator of raac) and Chris Meadows also
supported the renaming. There were quite a few other people who I
remember speaking up during the debate, but I won't speak for them without
checking with them first. If you're really that interested, I can go ask
raa.* readers I know what they thought of it, or you can just go through
the list of regulars I posted earlier and count the number who voted for
the renaming.
>> Or it means that new newsgroups take a while to propagate, which they do.
>> Or it means that all the other new newsgroups which were created at the
>> same time were drawing off traffic from the .misc group, which they were.
> And there precisely lies the serious flaw in the *.misc argument.
> The other subgroups should have been drawing off traffic from
> the original "rec.arts.anime" newsgroup...they were not !
I don't find that particularly surprising, given that the sites which
haven't picked up the .misc group and dropped raa most likely also haven't
picked up the new subgroups.
You're definitely going to need a stronger argument than that.
> The main "anime" traffic did not move to the *.misc group until the
> rec.arts.anime parent group was destroyed on many access sites by the
> rmgroup control message. The choice had been removed from the anime
> readerships.
The anime readership made its choice in a public vote.
> My conception, rightly or wrongly, is that you are signalling to the
> proponent of the RFD for "rec.games.board.worldinflames" that both
> you personally _and_ Usenet Group-advice are very supportive of the
> inclusion of the renaming of rec.games board in his RFD
You're right. I am. I support a renaming of rec.games.board. I really
don't think I've made any secret of that. Furthermore, group-advice on
the whole supports renaming of parent groups. Again, we have never made
any secret of that.
> ...despite the RFD discussion itself showing almost unanimous
> disapproval of the *.misc renaming.
Yes. I still support a renaming of rec.games.board, since I think it will
be a good idea. I understand the concerns of the people who oppose a
renaming, but I think they are, by and large, concerned with problems that
will be short-term, as opposed to more long-term problems with
organization and usage that I think may happen if the group isn't renamed.
Now let me ask you something, Colin. Why am I not permitted to have my
own opinion? I'm not saying you shouldn't object to .misc renamings. I
think you're wrong, but you have a perfect right to believe and argue for
whatever you choose. So do I. That's how the current system works;
people on both sides present their arguments and try to convince each
other and the proponent and the final choice is up to the proponent of the
group.
Colin Douthwaite
Dave Casper (cas...@axcrna.cern.ch) wrote:
> When the voting is finished, I'd like to compare the number of
> posts over the past year by yes and no voters - I suspect if
> weighted by the actual usage of the group, the renaming would fail
> by 10:1 at least. It seems to me the height of arrogance to vote
> on a proposal which intimately concerns a group you never read.
It will be a travesty of the pre-RFD/RFD/CFV process if the renaming
of rec.games.board actually goes to the vote !
The opposition shown in the RFD discussion should have resulted in
the renaming being dropped.
RFD proponents are expected to be cognisant of the RFD discussion
and modify the RFD and CFV accordingly.
This RFD's proponent has declared that he will not do this
because he personally wants it to go to a vote, which is not a
valid reason for proceeding to CFV.
However...I think your idea of comparing the number of past posts in
rec.games.board over the year ( or some specified period ) by YES
and NO voters is an interesting one. I think it could be done fairly
easily by using DejaNews and could be useful for assessing at least
the posters to a newsgroup. Of course it does not help to classify
or identify the non-posters who vote in the CFV.
Bye,
Colin Douthwaite
Adam Huby (a...@crosfield.co.uk) wrote:
>In article <4oiqnv$1...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
>Stephen Graham <gra...@maxwell.ee.washington.edu> wrote:
>>In article <4od28v$o...@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
>>Alec Habig <aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu> wrote:
>>>You're the only person I recognize who likes the idea. All of the other people
>>>posting in favor of the rename seem to be news.groups denizens.
>>
>>current readership briefly, it has long term benefits. Consistency in
>>names across a hierarchy make it simpler for many people to find the
>>group they're interested in.
>FWIW, I agree with this; consistency is a Good Thing (TM). I'll be voting
>in favour of the .misc rename (and abstaining on wif).
Hmm...FWIW, I am sure the regular readers of "rec.boards.games" will
greatly appreciate you-all renaming their existing newsgroup to
*.misc to indulge your ideological views on what is a Good Thing (TM).
Actually "renaming" is a misnomer for what actually occurs. The
parent newsgroup is rmgrouped and a new _subgroup_ is created which
is in no way equivalent to the original parent newsgroup. The *.misc
group becomes merely a subgroup for "anything else"
So if you vote for the renaming you are voting to destroy and remove
an existing newsgroup desired by other users. That is an offensive
action against other Net users and is unacceptable !
Since you have apparently not seen it...
-------------------------------------------------------------------
[...deletia for brevity...]
Bye,
Richard Gadsden
Jeffery S. Jones wrote:
>
> Is there some sort of usenet "political" push to make _all_ groups
> with subgroups have a *.misc group for some reason? If so, why not try
> to do it globally, rather than locally, to every single group?
>
posts on the subject for the reasons. It creates some short-term
inconvenience, but there are long-term advantages. Unfortunately,
most people only notice the short-term inconvenience, and not the
long-term advantages.
On the second question, it's my opinion that it should be.
One proposal for the rename of every 'parent' group to *.misc
should be put through, with a simultaneous amendment to
the Guidelines to require and make automatic a rename to .misc
unless a proposal specifies otherwise (eg, the split of rec.sport.rugby
to rec.sport.rugby.union and rec.sport.rugby.league didn't need a
.misc because all rugby is either union or league).
Apparently, the 200 character limit to Xposts makes this a practical
impossibilty, but if it's a rule then make it a rule; if it
isn't, then we get this perennial flamewar.
> But I really don't understand why rec.games.board is any less clear a
> name for the main group than the same with .misc added? Especially when
> making the change will inconvenience a lot of people, require massive
> changed to web page references, FAQs, etc.
>
It's not a change for clarity, really; there are good reasons for it
which have more to do with the news distrbution system than
user preferences.
--
Richard Gadsden C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk
"I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right
to say it" - Voltaire
Permission granted for email to be posted on Usenet or forwarded to any
other email address. No other permission granted under copyright laws
unless stated otherwise
Dave Casper
In article <qum3f4e...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU>, Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes...
>
>Now let me ask you something, Colin. Why am I not permitted to have my
>own opinion?
Because you're an outsider, sticking your nose into our business.
You're welcome to have an opinion on anything you please, but don't try to
suggest it should have any weight in something that's none of your business.
Let's put it like this: I think you should shave your head and change your
name to Bozo T. Clown. I'm entitled to my opinion (by your argument), so why
don't we call for a USENET-wide vote on this question?
Oh, you don't like the idea? Well, you're welcome to vote against it.
The reason this is absurd is it's none of my business how you wear your
hair or what you call yourself. By the same token, it's nobody's business
but the participants of r.g.b what we call our group, and it's *certainly*
not the business of a bunch of high and mighty busybodies from news.groups.
The net.world is not going to come crashing down if r.g.b keeps the same name
it's had for years, so don't try to tell me that the administration has a
deep concern here.
Nothing personal - I'm sure you're convinced that you can better promote
The Greater Good by interfering with our group. But you should not be
surprised those who are directly affected react to such a crass display of
arrogance.
Dave
d.ca...@cern.ch
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Dave Casper <cas...@axcrnb.cern.ch> writes:
> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes...
>> Now let me ask you something, Colin. Why am I not permitted to have my
>> own opinion?
> Because you're an outsider, sticking your nose into our business.
I read rec.games.board. That blows that argument all to hell. Next?
> But you should not be surprised those who are directly affected react to
> such a crass display of arrogance.
Look in a mirror sometime, my friend.
Eric Roush
In article <2JUN1996...@axcrnb.cern.ch>, cas...@axcrnb.cern.ch (Dave
Casper) wrote:
> In article <qum3f4e...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU>, Russ Allbery
<r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes...
> >
> >Now let me ask you something, Colin. Why am I not permitted to have my
> >own opinion?
>
> Because you're an outsider, sticking your nose into our business.
>
> You're welcome to have an opinion on anything you please, but don't try to
> suggest it should have any weight in something that's none of your business.
>
> Let's put it like this: I think you should shave your head and change your
> name to Bozo T. Clown. I'm entitled to my opinion (by your argument), so why
> don't we call for a USENET-wide vote on this question?
I second this proposal. How do we go about making this
a RFD?
--
Eric Roush Phil Niekro for the HOF!
edr...@acpub.duke.edu (Net and Real!)
also coa...@aol.com Send your net ballot to vi...@baseball.org
------------------------------------------------------
Maddux/Glavine in 1996! It's Time for a Change-Up!
Psychohist
C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk
Jeffery S. Jones wrote:
>
> Is there some sort of usenet "political" push to make _all_ groups
> with subgroups have a *.misc group for some reason? If so, why not
try
> to do it globally, rather than locally, to every single group?
>
Yes, there are advantages to this; read any of Russ Alberry's
posts on the subject for the reasons. It creates some short-term
inconvenience, but there are long-term advantages. Unfortunately,
most people only notice the short-term inconvenience, and not the
long-term advantages.
Or, more specifically, Jones is exactly right: there is a political push
to eliminate parent/child groups.
I would say that most people only notice the short-term inconvenience
because the long-term advantages are microscopic and largely illusory.
For those that don't have the time to wade through thousands of news.group
posts, my impression was as follows:
Advantages to changing a parent group to .misc when a child group is
added:
(1) A lot of newsgroup software can search through information a bit
faster if each name can be either a parent of a tree or the name of a
newsgroup, but nothis advantage is on the order of microseconds each time
you access a post. Since r.g.b is both a group and the parent of r.g.b.ce
and r.g.b.marketplace, you are paying this penalty now.
(2) A few newsgroup readers can't handle names that are both groups and
parents of group trees. Specifics about the software versions and the
machines they run on have not been forthcoming from those that have
mentioned it.
My reaction is that it takes a very long term for the speed of access to
add up to anything significant. I wasted more than an hour wading through
news.groups because of this RFD; at 10 microseconds per post, I'd have to
read every r.g.b.misc post for 9863 years to make up for that hour. As
for the newsgroup readers that can't handle the current structure, their
users would be better off in the 'long term' if they switched to non-buggy
software.
Disadvantages to changing a parent group to .misc:
(1) Current readers of the group (estimated to be in the tens of
thousands for r.g.b based on Russ Allbery's pro-misc statistics of 1000
lurkers per 1 poster) have to reprogram their newsreaders to switch. Many
people will miss posts; a few will drop out completely (but 1% of e).
(2) Newbies to the internet will probably take months longer to decide to
subscribe to a group called rec.games.board.misc than to rec.games.board -
they'll check out .ce and .wif first, and find out those don't pertain to
the games they're interested in, and perhaps rec.games.misc, before
finally getting here. This is months of wasted time for every new
boardgamer on the internet.
Notice that the advantages to the .misc are primarily for the convenience
of computers, while the disadvantages to .misc primarily hurt humans. It
used to be that the computers existed for the convenience of humans,
rather than vice versa!
Warren J. Dew
Drew Fudenberg
Russ Allbery wrote:
>
>
>
> * The group is already a .misc group in everything but name; most of the
> current traffic is discussion of miscellaneous board games. Renaming the group to reflect its actual content would make things clearer.
".misc" suggests to some of us that the "named" groups are the main ones,
with ".misc" an add-on for "other stuff that popped up later."
>
> * It maintains a distinction between hierarchy and group in the newsgroup
> structure. Whether or not you consider that important depends largely
> on your view of Usenet's organizational structure.
>
> * It solves a wide variety of problems on the technical end of news
> servers, all of which I would classify under "annoyances." Those
> include making it easier to administer INN feeds, maintaining the
> distinction between hierarchies and newsgroups in the file system
> structure which is a big help if one is working in the spool area by
> hand or with quick scripts, and slightly helping overall news server
> performance since the server doesn't have to search through a large
> directory for subdirectories when someone accesses the subgroup.
> could the same end be achieved by "promoting" w-i-f to the same level as board,
that is "rec.games.w-i-f"? is there a gain to the net adminstrators to
having long trees with few branches, versus more branches at each level?
and would that take care of your concerns below?
> There are a couple more reasons which would be more relevent were this the
> first reorganization, but which still apply to some lesser extent:
>
> * It makes it quite clear to readers that there are now more groups in
> the hierarchy that they may wish to read.
>
> * It makes it clear to administrators that rec.games.board is now a
> hierarchy rather than just a single group, making it more likely that
> those administrators who do not automatically add new newsgroups will
> add all of the hierarchy rather than just the root groop.
>
>
>
--
Drew Fudenberg
email: fude...@fas.harvard.edu
http://fudenberg.fas.harvard.edu
Psychohist
In an effort not to rehash my previous views (unlike some others here), I
just want to point out a couple things that seem to be being ignored:
(1) There is a very good reason not to separate the .misc on r.g.b and
the .worldinflames. Specifically, what if .misc passes and .worldinflames
fails?
This is not so far-fetched as it sounds - there are a large number of
people who vote against every new newsgroup (the argument being that if
enough people really want the group, they will be outvoted). But on the
.misc proposal, if separated from .worldinflames, these people might be
outvoted by pro-.misc ists. The Pro-misc people are probably already
offended that r.g.b didn't get the .misc suffix when r.g.b.ce and
r.g.b.marketplace were created, and the anti-new-group people won't care
about a .misc rename that doesn't change the overall number of groups.
(2) People who don't read r.g.b might still have a legitimate interest in
the overall efficiency of the internet, or of the overall newsgroup
organization. It has been said that the .misc arrangement allows
computers to be a bit faster when searching for messages. What are the
hours of the few against the microseconds of the masses?
Warren Dew
Isaac Kuo
In article <4okj75$n...@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
Alec Habig <aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu> wrote:
>Psychohist <psych...@aol.com> wrote:
>>The traffic on r.g.b is not high enough that a split would normally be
>>looked upon kindly. Furthermore a wif/misc split would be incredibly
>>uneven - wif posts constitute no more than about half a dozen posts a day,
>>not the scores or hundreds that normally justify a new news group. This
>>causes me to wonder if the wif/misc proposal is getting more favorable
>>treatment solely because of the rename of r.g.b to r.g.b.misc.
>The proposal for a WiF newsgroup is a good one. Read the RFD. There is a very
>active WiF mailing list that wishes to make the move to a newsgroup instead of
>remaining as a list. The fact that this list exists is what keeps the WiF
>presence on r.g.b so low.
Hold on. If the WiF mailing list users want to use Usenet Netnews so
badly, why aren't there a lot of WiF mailing list users saying so by
posting their support in this thread (either in r.g.b or news.groups)?
I'm sure _some_ people posting here must be on that mailing list, right?
Please speak up. Otherwise, I can't really believe that they want
to move their discussion to a newsgroup. And I can't very well browse
the discussion on the mailing list to find out, can I?
>Unfortunately, the renaming of r.g.b itself is useless. Luckily, we can vote
>for the good proposal, and against the lousy one.
That's not exactly the way things work. Already there have been some
people posting in this thread who have said they'll vote for the name
change even though they don't use rec.games.board (and presumably
wouldn't use r.g.b.misc either--the name change doesn't change the
content).
--
_____ Isaac Kuo (k...@bit.csc.lsu.edu,isaa...@tyrell.net)
__|_>o<_|__
/___________\ "Just as Jesus was a Jew, the opening
\=\>-----</=/ theme to Macross was not J-pop."
Isaac Kuo
In article <qumvihb...@cyclone.stanford.edu>,
Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>In news.groups, Steve Patterson <spatt...@wwdc.com> writes:
>> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> says:
>>> Second, newsgroups do not exist in a vacuum. Some of us have an
>>> on-going interest in seeing at least some naming consistency across all
>>> Big Eight newsgroups.
>> OK. I'll bite. What the farging heck are the grand, magnificent
>> reasons to rename the group to *.misc? I can't see any, and can only
>> see the interruptions in service and inevitable confusion that plague
>> every group shuffle I've witnessed.
>> How would a renaming of rec.games.board be sufficiently benificial to
>> offset these difficulties?
>Here are the reasons in my mind which are relevent to the current
>situation in rec.games.board:
> * The group is already a .misc group in everything but name; most of the
> current traffic is discussion of miscellaneous board games. Renaming
> the group to reflect its actual content would make things clearer.
This is contentless. Almost _any_ newsgroup can be described as
discussion of "miscellaneous" *. For example, rec.arts.sf.science
can be described as discussion of miscellaneous science fiction
technology/technical issues.
Without at least some sibling groups discussing specific
board games, this argument doesn't make sense.
Where are all those sibling groups? Don't site rec.games.go and
rec.games.chess. They are _abstract_ games, and would properly
be subgroups of rec.games.abstract, not rec.games.board.
Rec.games.mecha isn't either, since it includes computer, arcade,
and RPG games.
> * It would be consistent with other hierarchies, and consistency overall
> makes the namespace more usable for people and makes it clearer upon
> first glance which group discusses what.
I don't see how anybody who could figure out what rec.games.board.misc
meant couldn't figure out what rec.games.board meant.
> * It helps with a variety of problems in organization and finding
> things. For example, it's unclear to some users when, given groups
> named rec.games.board.marketplace and rec.games.board, whether
> marketplace postings should be posted to both newsgroups or just to
> .marketplace.
This argument might hold some water if r.g.b had a significant
number of crossposts between r.g.b.marketplace and r.g.b.
As it is, we've never had a significant problem with Xposts with
.marketplace.
This rationale is therefore no reason at all for a rename.
>.misc also makes it much more obvious that there are
> additional newsgroups, depending on the interface one uses for reading
> news. (And there have been several for-sale ads posted to rgb over the
> past few days, as well as one on Cosmic Encounter; I'm not sure if a
> renaming would have helped that or not.)
Such for sale adds will be posted in .misc groups as well, as you're
no doubt aware.
> * It maintains a distinction between hierarchy and group in the newsgroup
> structure. Whether or not you consider that important depends largely
> on your view of Usenet's organizational structure.
> * It solves a wide variety of problems on the technical end of news
> servers, all of which I would classify under "annoyances." Those
> include making it easier to administer INN feeds, maintaining the...
These are considerations in favor of the name change, and is the
reason why a personally slightly favor *.misc in general, but one
which I feel is insignificant compared to the desires of r.g.b*
users. After all, do r.g.b.marketplace users even _notice_ that
they're being slightly delayed by r.g.b files?
>There are a couple more reasons which would be more relevent were this the
>first reorganization, but which still apply to some lesser extent:
> * It makes it quite clear to readers that there are now more groups in
> the hierarchy that they may wish to read.
How did the reader find r.g.b in the first place? In an FAQ? No
doubt it would mention the other newsgroups. By searching for
newsgroups with "game" or "board" in it? They'd see the others
as well.
> * It makes it clear to administrators that rec.games.board is now a
> hierarchy rather than just a single group, making it more likely that
> those administrators who do not automatically add new newsgroups will
> add all of the hierarchy rather than just the root groop.
These administrators would not "be doing their job". Just as those
administrators which do not remove the original newsgroup would not
"be doing their job". Which do you think represents the larger
proportion of administrators?
>Keep in mind that I'm trying to look at the issue from a long-term
>perspective. Renaming a group does indeed produce some temporary pain,
>but the group is likely to exist for a good decade in the future and it's
>highly unlikely that it would ever need to be renamed again. I think the
>increase in clarity in the long run is worth it.
If you can get a majority of _rec.games.board*_ users to agree, then
great. Otherwise, stop meddling with our discussions! Please!
>And, for the record, I have gone through newsgroup renamings of other
>groups before from the reader's perspective, the largest of which was
>probably the rec.games.deckmaster => rec.games.trading-cards.* renaming.
>I have a good idea exactly what problems are involved, exactly what steps
>are likely to be necessary, and how much trouble the whole thing actually
>ends up being. It really isn't that bad overall. There are usually a
>handful of people who have to contact their sysadmins to get them to add
>the new groups, a few people end up volunteering to post a periodic FAQ
>about the renaming and e-mail people who have trouble, and things are a
>bit hectic for a month or two, but then everything settles down nicely.
I suppose it really isn't "that bad" if you _supported_ the changes.
If you're part of a majority which does _not_ support the changes, and
some guy who doesn't even use the newsgroups you're using wants to
mess around with it regardless, it is "that bad".
Isaac Kuo
In article <qum3f4e...@cyclone.stanford.edu>,
Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>In news.groups, Colin Douthwaite <cf...@southern.co.nz> writes:
>> Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) wrote:
>>> In news.groups, Isaac Ji Kuo <isaa...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> writes:
>>>> Recently, rec.arts.anime had its name changed to rec.arts.anime.misc in
>>>> a controverisal re-org which upset many users of r.a.a.*.
>>> And was fully and strongly supported by many other users of raa.*.
>> Where is your evidence for that very emphatic statement ? Do you
>> perhaps mean Stephanie da Silva and Brian Edmonds ? They constitute
>> "many" ? How ?
>Colin, please keep in mind that I know and regularly talk to a number of
>the raa.* regulars. Off the top of my head, in addition to Stephanie and
>Brian, I know that MegaZone (moderator of raac) and Chris Meadows also
>supported the renaming.
Sorry, but supporting the _renaming_ does not imply supporting the
_entire_ reorg!
And once again, Stephanie da Silva is _not_ a user of r.a.a.*. She
maintains an anime related mailing list, sure, but doesn't user
r.a.a.* to a significant degree.
>There were quite a few other people who I
>remember speaking up during the debate, but I won't speak for them without
>checking with them first. If you're really that interested, I can go ask
>raa.* readers I know what they thought of it, or you can just go through
>the list of regulars I posted earlier and count the number who voted for
>the renaming.
Please do. And please find out if they, as you said, "fully and
strongly supported" the entire re-org.
>>> Or it means that new newsgroups take a while to propagate, which they do.
>>> Or it means that all the other new newsgroups which were created at the
>>> same time were drawing off traffic from the .misc group, which they were.
Wrong. The _total_ traffic of r.a.a.misc and all the new newsgroups
which were created was still a small fraction of r.a.a traffic.
This, despite the fact that all of the new newsgroups were designed
for topics which did not occupy much r.a.a traffic (and thus were
created to promote new traffic).
>> The main "anime" traffic did not move to the *.misc group until the
>> rec.arts.anime parent group was destroyed on many access sites by the
>> rmgroup control message. The choice had been removed from the anime
>> readerships.
>The anime readership made its choice in a public vote.
This is ridiculous! If the "anime readership" made its choice,
then why was r.a.a.misc so heavily shunned in favor of r.a.a?
If r.a.a.misc was having propogation problems, then prove it--because
your speculation that that _might_ have been a problem is the first
I've heard of it!
>> ...despite the RFD discussion itself showing almost unanimous
>> disapproval of the *.misc renaming.
>Yes. I still support a renaming of rec.games.board, since I think it will
>be a good idea. I understand the concerns of the people who oppose a
>renaming, but I think they are, by and large, concerned with problems that
>will be short-term, as opposed to more long-term problems with
>organization and usage that I think may happen if the group isn't renamed.
I consider the concerns of r.g.b* users to be all important even
if we are being swayed by "short-term" considerations.
If r.g.b* users are convinced by your arguments, then great.
But don't vote on the CFV if you want to claim that r.g.b* users
made their public choice known later on.
>Now let me ask you something, Colin. Why am I not permitted to have my
>own opinion? I'm not saying you shouldn't object to .misc renamings. I
>think you're wrong, but you have a perfect right to believe and argue for
>whatever you choose. So do I. That's how the current system works;
>people on both sides present their arguments and try to convince each
>other and the proponent and the final choice is up to the proponent of the
>group. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^
So you're admitting that the current system is heavily in favor of
someone wanting to make changes?
Even if a vast majority of r.g.b* users don't want any new group,
the system doesn't take that into consideration. By definition,
the majority who doesn't see any need for a new group can't be
"the proponent of the [new] group".
And if it comes down to the CFV, there's that problem of non-users
of r.g.b* voting on it.
Yes, you can have your opinions. But when your opinions translate
to actions which meddle with others, it's perfectly valid for us
to get upset. In this case, you've made no secret that you're
going to vote in favor of the name change if it comes to a vote.
At the same time, you claim that the CFV is supposed to be where
the users of the newsgroups concerned can let their desires be
known (which it is, indeed _supposed_ to be). Do you not see the
contradiction?
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Drew Fudenberg <fude...@fas.harvard.edu> writes:
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> * The group is already a .misc group in everything but name; most of
>> the current traffic is discussion of miscellaneous board games.
>> Renaming the group to reflect its actual content would make things
>> clearer.
> ".misc" suggests to some of us that the "named" groups are the main
> ones, with ".misc" an add-on for "other stuff that popped up later."
Well, I wouldn't agree with the "later", but my experience with other
hierarchies (rec.games.comics.*, rec.games.trading-cards.*,
rec.games.frp.*, and several others) seems to indicate that the hierarchy
is likely to grow quite a bit later. That's backed up by the number of
active mailing lists on various board games. I think .misc is likely to
be much clearer than rec.games.board would be when there are another ten
or so newsgroups for other board games, and I think that's practically
assured to happen in the long run.
.misc on Usenet *means* general, and most Usenet readers have had at least
a few experiences with that (rec.arts.comics.misc has been the heart of
the comics hierarchy for years, for example). It has the advantage in
both making it clear that the group is for discussion of general and
miscellaneous topics as well as indicating that there are other, more
specific groups that may be appropriate to any given topic.
>> * It solves a wide variety of problems on the technical end of news
>> servers, all of which I would classify under "annoyances." [snip]
> could the same end be achieved by "promoting" w-i-f to the same level as
> board, that is "rec.games.w-i-f"?
Yes, those concerns would. However, naming it that would lose the
information that "worldinflames" is a board game, which I think is a bad
idea. You're likely to pick up a lot of interested readers when the group
is first created, and when people search through the list of newsgroups on
"board", just from the people out there who are interested in board games
in general but may not be aware of worldinflames in particular. Those
people are much less likely to check out, or even see, a World in Flames
group which isn't under rec.games.board since they're looking for board
games they may like.
> is there a gain to the net adminstrators to having long trees with few
> branches, versus more branches at each level?
Not particularly.
> and would that take care of your concerns below?
>> * It makes it quite clear to readers that there are now more groups in
>> the hierarchy that they may wish to read.
>> * It makes it clear to administrators that rec.games.board is now a
>> hierarchy rather than just a single group, making it more likely that
>> those administrators who do not automatically add new newsgroups will
>> add all of the hierarchy rather than just the root groop.
No, not at all. (Again, those concerns aren't nearly as applicable to
rec.games.board as they are to groups that are undergoing their first
split.)
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes:
> In news.groups, Drew Fudenberg <fude...@fas.harvard.edu> writes:
>> is there a gain to the net adminstrators to having long trees with few
>> branches, versus more branches at each level?
> Not particularly.
I should clarify this, because what I was thinking when I wrote it
probably isn't what people will be thinking when they read it. What I
meant was that there is no particular speed gain or any other sort of
technical advantage to having long trees with few branches. In many
cases, however, I think it tends to make things clearer (you wouldn't want
every group on the same level, for example). So there is a gain, just not
on the technical end.
Kenneth Arromdee
In article <qumvihb...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU>,
Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>Here are the reasons in my mind which are relevent to the current
>situation in rec.games.board:
> * The group is already a .misc group in everything but name; most of the
> current traffic is discussion of miscellaneous board games. Renaming
> the group to reflect its actual content would make things clearer.
This assumes your conclusion--i.e. that discussion of multiple categories of
something implies that a group must be named .misc. If, in fact, a .misc
name is unnecessary for such a group, then such traffic does not imply the
group is ".misc in everything but name".
> * It would be consistent with other hierarchies, and consistency overall
> makes the namespace more usable for people and makes it clearer upon
> first glance which group discusses what.
Do you know how the other hierarchies got those names? Often, people were
given suggestions so strongly worded that they believed they were mandatory.
After a lot of complaints, group-* stopped wording the suggestions so strongly,
but their legacy continues in that they are still used as precedents. I do
not consider them legitimate as precedents.
Furthermore, your idea here is unfair to the people who believe that some,
but not all, such groups should be named .misc (such as people who believe
that only if a small portion of the traffic is in the main group, should a
.misc name be used). It puts us in the unenviable position of finding our
support for .misc groups we _would_ accept, used as precedents for other
.misc groups that we would not.
> * It helps with a variety of problems in organization and finding
> things. For example, it's unclear to some users when, given groups
> named rec.games.board.marketplace and rec.games.board, whether
> marketplace postings should be posted to both newsgroups or just to
> .marketplace.
No matter what groups exist, whether to crosspost will be unclear. There isn't
something inherent about .misc which implies "no crossposts".
Furthermore, this contradicts your earlier argument. If this argument is true,
it implies that .misc groups must not be created when crossposts are allowed,
because that would _reduce_ clarity. Yet, your other arguments imply a
universal .misc renaming which happens even if crossposts are allowed.
> * It solves a wide variety of problems on the technical end of news
> servers, all of which I would classify under "annoyances." Those
> include making it easier to administer INN feeds, maintaining the
> distinction between hierarchies and newsgroups in the file system
> structure which is a big help if one is working in the spool area by
> hand or with quick scripts, and slightly helping overall news server
> performance since the server doesn't have to search through a large
> directory for subdirectories when someone accesses the subgroup.
Such "annoyances", when people get more specific, generally turn out to be
solvable by six line patches (such as David Parson's patch to modify INN to
handle a sys file entry for a mixed hierarchy). Fix your news software.
>There are a couple more reasons which would be more relevent were this the
>first reorganization, but which still apply to some lesser extent:
> * It makes it quite clear to readers that there are now more groups in
> the hierarchy that they may wish to read.
"Newsgroup foo.blah not in .newsrc -- subscribe? [ynYN]" makes it clear that
there are more groups. If your newsreader doesn't ask the equivalent of that
question, it is broken enough that you should not be dictating changes in
newsgroup names merely to handle it better.
--
Ken Arromdee (arro...@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu, karr...@nyx.cs.du.edu;
http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~arromdee)
"Kermit the Pig?!?!?!?!" -- The Muppet Show
Kenneth Arromdee
In article <qum3f4e...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU>,
Only if you assume that the vote is a fair reflection of what the readership
desired. I suppose you are going to tell me that people wanted
soc.culture.scientists too?
Votes pass for many reasons, some related to procedural characteristics of
the vote such as lack of discussion or combination of several votes on the
same ballot.
Russ Allbery
Psychohist <psych...@aol.com> writes:
> Advantages to changing a parent group to .misc when a child group is
> added:
The advantages you listed, two of the various minor software advantages
for news administrators, are fairly minor. The namespace consistency
issues and the additional help for new users in finding things are more
what I'm worried about.
> (2) A few newsgroup readers can't handle names that are both groups and
> parents of group trees. Specifics about the software versions and the
> machines they run on have not been forthcoming from those that have
> mentioned it.
The software referred to is INN 1.4. You'll find it runs on quite a few
machines. The problem isn't that it can't handle both, but that handling
both is counter-intuitive and *after a split* can easily result in
administrators not picking up the new subgroups since INN will not add
them automatically. This is really only a major issue after the first
split, and I don't think it applies to the current rec.games.board
situation.
> My reaction is that it takes a very long term for the speed of access to
> add up to anything significant.
Yup. Cumulative across the entire spool, it's just an annoyance.
> (1) Current readers of the group (estimated to be in the tens of
> thousands for r.g.b based on Russ Allbery's pro-misc statistics of 1000
> lurkers per 1 poster) have to reprogram their newsreaders to switch.
> Many people will miss posts; a few will drop out completely (but 1% of
> e).
Those aren't "pro-misc" statistics; they're taken from Brian Reid's old
readership statistics. Note that they are disputed and could well be off
by a factor of 10 or so in either direction. I think the evidence is
fairly solid, though, that the number of lurkers is large.
Yup, you're right, everyone would need to switch groups when the renaming
happens. That's a disadvantage. I highly doubt it would mean anyone
stopped reading the group entirely, but I could be wrong.
> (2) Newbies to the internet will probably take months longer to decide
> to subscribe to a group called rec.games.board.misc than to
> rec.games.board - they'll check out .ce and .wif first, and find out
> those don't pertain to the games they're interested in, and perhaps
> rec.games.misc, before finally getting here. This is months of wasted
> time for every new boardgamer on the internet.
I highly doubt this. In fact, I think what you're mentioning ends up
being an advantage. rec.games.board says "this is the newsgroup for all
board games." rec.games.board.misc says "there are other newsgroups for
some board games, and this is the group for all board games without their
own group." You claim that this will slow people down; I claim that this
will make it faster for people to find the .ce and .worldinflames groups,
and any other groups with are later created as mailing lists move onto
Usenet.
Long-term, I would expect lots and lots of various additional newsgroups
in the rec.games.board.* hierarchy, and as that happens this group will
become more and more the group for miscellaneous board games that don't
have their own home. I think the renaming would clarify things
considerably, especially for new users, and is worth getting over with
early on.
> Notice that the advantages to the .misc are primarily for the
> convenience of computers, while the disadvantages to .misc primarily
> hurt humans.
If you read the list of reasons why I favor renaming parent groups in
general, which I posted earlier, you'll discover that this is not true, at
least in my opinion.
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Isaac Kuo <k...@bit.csc.lsu.edu> writes:
> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>> Colin, please keep in mind that I know and regularly talk to a number
>> of the raa.* regulars. Off the top of my head, in addition to
>> Stephanie and Brian, I know that MegaZone (moderator of raac) and Chris
>> Meadows also supported the renaming.
> Sorry, but supporting the _renaming_ does not imply supporting the
> _entire_ reorg!
But supporting the renaming was what I was talking about. My apologies if
that wasn't clear.
>> Or it means that new newsgroups take a while to propagate, which they
>> do. Or it means that all the other new newsgroups which were created
>> at the same time were drawing off traffic from the .misc group, which
>> they were.
> Wrong. The _total_ traffic of r.a.a.misc and all the new newsgroups
> which were created was still a small fraction of r.a.a traffic.
Which doesn't refute what I just said; in fact, it supports it. It takes
a while for propagation and usage for newly created groups to stabilize,
and it grows slowly. This is common. This is the reason why there is a
three-month freeze on additional reorganizations of the same hierarchy
after one passes.
>> The anime readership made its choice in a public vote.
> This is ridiculous! If the "anime readership" made its choice, then why
> was r.a.a.misc so heavily shunned in favor of r.a.a?
Well, that's hard to tell from here, given that Stanford dropped raa with
tale's rmgroup. Perhaps you can provide some solid statistics? (Or Colin
could? Colin's statistics are usually reasonably good.)
> If r.a.a.misc was having propogation problems, then prove it--because
> your speculation that that _might_ have been a problem is the first
> I've heard of it!
There has already been another person commenting several days ago that one
of his servers didn't pick up the new groups. New newsgroups *always*
have propagation problems for the first few months. After a bit of time
it gets sorted out and stabilizes.
> If r.g.b* users are convinced by your arguments, then great. But don't
> vote on the CFV if you want to claim that r.g.b* users made their public
> choice known later on.
I'm an rgb user. I'm not allowed to make a choice?
>> So do I. That's how the current system works; people on both sides
>> present their arguments and try to convince each other and the
>> proponent and the final choice is up to the proponent of the group.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> So you're admitting that the current system is heavily in favor of
> someone wanting to make changes?
No, actually, I find that assertion absurd.
| 3) AFTER the waiting period, and if there were no serious objections
| that might invalidate the vote, and if 100 more valid YES/create
| votes are received than NO/don't create AND at least 2/3 of the total
| number of valid votes received are in favor of creation, a newgroup
| control message may be sent out. If the 100 vote margin or 2/3
| percentage is not met, the group should not be created.
The voting system is heavily biased against any changes. An RFD, however,
is a proposal put forward by a proponent. Various people can give the
proponent advice on their proposal, but in the end the proponent controls
the proposal. If that weren't the case, you'd see all sorts of people
screaming and yelling at us for interfering with a proponent's proposal
and exerting undue pressure.
Basically, those of us who give advice to proponents lose either way. If
we don't interfere with a proponent's proposal, people like you get mad at
us for not blocking proposals you don't like. If we do, people get mad at
us for interfering and exerting undue influence over the proposal.
> Even if a vast majority of r.g.b* users don't want any new group, the
> system doesn't take that into consideration.
The voting system takes that into consideration, and the proponent should
also take that into consideration. If you read back through this thread,
though, you'll discover that I'm definitely not the only one supporting a
renaming.
> By definition, the majority who doesn't see any need for a new group
> can't be "the proponent of the [new] group".
Yup. If you have a suggestion on how you think the system should be
handled instead, I'm interested in hearing it.
> And if it comes down to the CFV, there's that problem of non-users of
> r.g.b* voting on it.
Sort of hard to address that problem when you can't even define what a
user of rgb* is in any meaningful way. After all, you're happily
categorizing me as a non-user when I read the group.
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Kenneth Arromdee <arro...@hops.cs.jhu.edu> writes:
> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>> * The group is already a .misc group in everything but name; most of the
>> current traffic is discussion of miscellaneous board games. Renaming
>> the group to reflect its actual content would make things clearer.
> This assumes your conclusion--i.e. that discussion of multiple
> categories of something implies that a group must be named .misc. If,
> in fact, a .misc name is unnecessary for such a group, then such traffic
> does not imply the group is ".misc in everything but name".
No, it assumes that a group which discusses miscellaneous topics should be
named .misc. In other words, it assumes that a group which discusses
miscellaneous board games should be named rec.games.board.misc, rather
than rec.games.board which implies that it discusses *all* board games and
board game related topics (which is not the case, since it doesn't discuss
Cosmic Encounter, buying and selling of games, and if the new proposal
passes, World in Flames).
>> * It would be consistent with other hierarchies, and consistency
>> overall makes the namespace more usable for people and makes it clearer
>> upon first glance which group discusses what.
> Do you know how the other hierarchies got those names? Often, people
> were given suggestions so strongly worded that they believed they were
> mandatory. After a lot of complaints, group-* stopped wording the
> suggestions so strongly, but their legacy continues in that they are
> still used as precedents. I do not consider them legitimate as
> precedents.
The use of the .misc naming convention preceded the existence of
group-advice, and I believe it even preceded Tale. It has certainly been
reinforced by him and group-advice over the years, but we didn't invent
it.
> Furthermore, your idea here is unfair to the people who believe that
> some, but not all, such groups should be named .misc (such as people who
> believe that only if a small portion of the traffic is in the main
> group, should a .misc name be used). It puts us in the unenviable
> position of finding our support for .misc groups we _would_ accept, used
> as precedents for other .misc groups that we would not.
I can see how my statement disagrees with your belief. I don't quite see
how it is unfair to it. What do you mean by "unfair"?
>> * It helps with a variety of problems in organization and finding
>> things. For example, it's unclear to some users when, given groups
>> named rec.games.board.marketplace and rec.games.board, whether
>> marketplace postings should be posted to both newsgroups or just to
>> .marketplace.
> No matter what groups exist, whether to crosspost will be unclear.
> There isn't something inherent about .misc which implies "no
> crossposts".
Actually, yes, there basically is. How many .misc groups do you know on
Usenet which encourage crossposts? (Given that most of them are
unmoderated, it's more a matter of encourage or discourage than allow.)
In every case that I can think of off-hand, crossposts to the .misc group
are generally inappropriate and often actively discouraged in the charter.
If .misc is the group for topics not covered by other newsgroups in the
hierarchy, I'd say that it strongly discourages crossposts by definition.
> Furthermore, this contradicts your earlier argument. If this argument
> is true, it implies that .misc groups must not be created when
> crossposts are allowed, because that would _reduce_ clarity. Yet, your
> other arguments imply a universal .misc renaming which happens even if
> crossposts are allowed.
I don't remember the last time a proposal specifically encouraged
crossposts between .misc and the other groups in the hierarchy. Could you
refresh my memory?
>> * It solves a wide variety of problems on the technical end of news
>> servers, all of which I would classify under "annoyances." Those
>> include making it easier to administer INN feeds, maintaining the
>> distinction between hierarchies and newsgroups in the file system
>> structure which is a big help if one is working in the spool area by
>> hand or with quick scripts, and slightly helping overall news server
>> performance since the server doesn't have to search through a large
>> directory for subdirectories when someone accesses the subgroup.
> Such "annoyances", when people get more specific, generally turn out to
> be solvable by six line patches (such as David Parson's patch to modify
> INN to handle a sys file entry for a mixed hierarchy). Fix your news
> software.
You have addressed only one of the several things I mentioned, and I can
assure you that none of the rest of them are fixable by six-line patches.
There are also several more I haven't mentioned, such as setting expire
times in C news (I believe that was the one that was brought up before).
David Parson's patch is also not widely available. Actually, I'm curious
why that is -- I'd think it would have been integrated into INN by now.
>> There are a couple more reasons which would be more relevent were this
>> the first reorganization, but which still apply to some lesser extent:
>> * It makes it quite clear to readers that there are now more groups in
>> the hierarchy that they may wish to read.
> "Newsgroup foo.blah not in .newsrc -- subscribe? [ynYN]" makes it clear
> that there are more groups.
Which works only for those reading news when the new group was added. It
does nothing to help the thousands of people who come along later.
> If your newsreader doesn't ask the equivalent of that question, it is
> broken enough that you should not be dictating changes in newsgroup
> names merely to handle it better.
I'm not dictating anything, Ken. I'm stating my opinion on what I think
is a better naming scheme and giving you reasons for why I believe the way
I do.
Keith Graham
Drew Fudenberg <fude...@fas.harvard.edu> writes:
>Russ Allbery wrote:
>>
>> * The group is already a .misc group in everything but name; most of the
>> current traffic is discussion of miscellaneous board games. Renaming
>> the group to reflect its actual content would make things clearer.
>".misc" suggests to some of us that the "named" groups are the main ones,
>with ".misc" an add-on for "other stuff that popped up later."
For whatever it's worth, the rec.games.frp split a fair time ago
went from a tremendously busy "rec.games.frp" to "rec.games.frp.misc",
"rec.games.frp.advocacy", and a few game specific groups, such as
"D&D", as well as an announce and archive groups. rec.games.frp.misc
is alive and well and very busy.
There was some disruption as threads moved from rec.games.frp to
the appropriate sub-group, but relatively speaking, very little.
One of the nice side effects is that, if someone wants to post,
they have a choice between "D&D" and "Misc", and they can guess
which one it goes into easily. i.e. it will keep WiF posts to
a minimum on rec.games.board[.misc] This also meant that high
volume subjects didn't swamp ".misc", which contributes to
more discussions of the lower volume subjects.
It probably also makes it easier to justify a new rec.games.board.*
subgroup when something new comes along that requires it. (Right
now, I expect there are people that don't even know there's a
CE subgroup.)
It is "appropriate", in that if we want to be consistant with the
other groups, which makes us easier to find, we'll do it someday.
The question is just "when is this going to happen"? I'd say,
go ahead and do it.
Long time r.g.b reader,
Keith Graham
s...@sadr.com
vap...@cad.gatech.edu
Jim Riley
In article <qum3f4k...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU> Russ Allbery wrote:
>Jim Riley <Jim...@gnn.com> writes:
>
>> Could I get you to comment on the following parts of the RFD?
>
>| This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of a
>| world-wide unmoderated Usenet newsgroup rec.games.board.worldinflames
>| and the renaming of the group rec.games.board to
>| rec.games.board.general. This is not a Call for Votes (CFV); you
>| cannot vote at this time. Procedural details are below.
>
>> Note the incorrect spelling of ".misc"
>
>Looks like someone missed a group name change during a revision. Note
>that .general is traditionally not used in newsgroup names due to the
>fact that it's a special keyword in some older revisions of news software
>and could cause some rather strange things to happen to followup
>articles.
Did group-advice or tale demand a renaming from an original proposal
that was a simple creation of the wif group, or that had proposed
.general rather than .misc?
Note there are currently 400 *.general newsgroups available on my
newsserver, so I wonder how valid the dictate against use of
.general is. It is possible that it is the *most* frequent terminal
name. How would you go about determining whether the dictate
against *.general is still meaningless.
Is the misstatement of purpose grounds for requesting that a
corrected RFD be posted?
If a 2nd RFD was posted that corrected the misspelling of .misc,
would there be any delay in the CFV? What about one that dropped
the .misc renaming? My understanding is that a CFV may occur 21
days after the 1st RFD, and must occur within 60 days of the
latest RFD. Is there a minimum time period that must elapse between
the latest RFD and the CFV? This assumes that there would be
no delay in securing approval of the 2nd RFD by tale.
>> What is the feeling on such renames?
>
>I personally think renaming parent groups is a good idea in general. I
>think it's a *very* good idea in this particular case and intend to vote
>for the renaming.
Sorry, my question was directed at the use of the name .general.
I have read where Peter da Silva had conducted several votes where
multiple choices were permitted rather than a single up or down vote.
Was this for a Big 8 proposal?
>> I think a great deal of the antipathy for .misc is that it to many it
>> means leftovers.
>
>It generally means "things not covered by other groups." Why that
>bothers some people is quite frankly puzzles me. It's an extremely
>accurate descriptive term in most cases.
I'm assuming that *misc* stands for *miscellaneous*, or perhaps
*miscellany*. Which is correct? As a data point, note that __Webster's
New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, (c) 1983__ does
not include "misc." among its list of "Abbreviations Commonly Used
in Writing and Printing". Let's check what *miscellaneous* means:
mis-cel-la-ne-ous adj 1.Made up of a variety of parts or ingredients.
2.Having a variety of characteristics, abilities or appearances.
3.Concerned with diverse subjects or aspects.
synonyms: miscellaneous, heterogeneous, motley, mixed, varied, assorted.
Miscellaneous things are similar in kind but sufficiently unlike on
secondary levels to defy orderly classification.
To either a native or non-native English speaker, it would not appear
that *misc* means "things not covered by other groups" or "that which
is not dealt with elsewhere". Even if there were *no* subgroups,
rec.games.board would discuss miscellaneous board games and
miscellaneous board games themes and genre. The .misc suffix is
superfluous.
The name "misc" violates conventions against abbreviation, and is
nondescriptive and misdescriptive of the topics of interest for the
proposed group rec.games.board.misc.
>> I think in some cases a .misc group can make sense. For example,
>> rec.sport.misc, would be an appropriate place for the discussion of
>> sports that do not have enough traffic to justify their own newsgroup.
>> For example, the lawnbowlers and hovercrafters (both recently defeated
>> rec.sport.* groups) could happily post to r.s.misc and nobody would be
>> the wiser that they were doing it - and using roughly the same
>> bandwidth as if their proposal had been approved.
>
>Right.
>
>> On the other hand it just doesn't seem appropriate to also mix in
>> discussion that transcends individual sports (say discussion on
>> college sports, or steroid use, or stadiums, or business aspects).
>Why not? Those are all miscellaneous aspects of sports.
Are they miscellaneous aspects of sports or simply aspects of
sports?
>I think you're interpreting the category "rec.sports.misc" far too
>narrowly. It doesn't just mean miscellaneous sports. It means
>miscellaneous aspects of sports as well.
I think I've just realized where I (and perhaps you and others) have
been confused. Let's say that you were preparing an inventory
of the contents of your wallet. Your inventory might look like
this:
Currency: $27.00
IDs: Driver's License (Cal) lllllllllll
Stanford Student Id mmmmmmmmmmm
Credit Cards:
VISA xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
MC yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy
AMEX zzzz zzzz zzzz zzzz
Photos: 5, various subjects wife, kids, dog.
Memberships:
YMCA
Usenet Cabal (tinc)
Miscellaneous business cards, receipts, memos.
If you are filling out an expense voucher for a business trip, there
will be separate categories for Transportation, Lodging, and Meals,
and one for Miscellaneous other expenses (which may not have to be
itemized if below some dollar amount).
If you were preparing the Agenda for a school board meeting it might
look like this:
Bond Issue
a. New Junior High.
b. Addition to Smith Elementary
c. Land acquistion for 2 elementary schools.
d. Interest costs, bond rating,
Hiring of new high school Principal.
a. Interim principal.
b. Qualifications.
c. Preference to current personnel and notification.
d. Hiring a search firm.
Miscellaneous
a. Acceptance of tree from Jones Elementary PTA.
b. Request from city council to use schools for polling places.
c. Damage report, water leak at Junior High School.
In the rules for the game of Diplomacy, the XIVth (of XIV) section
is called Miscellaneous. It includes a mixture of "rules" (how long
a game will last, teaching new players the rules, alternative rules
for less than 7 players, handling a player leaving the game, and 3
minor rule clarifications).
Note that in all these cases, Miscellaneous refers to a *mixture* of
items for which there is no overall organizational theme, and which
are of relatively minor importance or significance. Miscellaneous
is where you put the bills that don't fit into your other piles and
you don't want 4 piles with one bill each.
misc.* is appropriate because the groups there don't fit into the
other 7 hierarchies, and there are not enough to form their own
hierarchy (though some have suggested that many could fit into a
business-oriented hierarchy). *.misc is an appropriate place for
sub-subjects that don't have enough traffic to merit their own
group and most of the other subjects do.
Do you really believe that the thread "Can Internet be god?" should
be relegated to a .misc group?
>| It is certainly to be hoped that rec.games.board can get through this
>| transition with the minimum of flameage. It will remain difficult to
>| create rec.games.board.* groups without some rename of the base group
>| at some stage.
>
>> Why is it *difficult* to create rec.games.board.worldinflames without
>> the rename of rec.games.board? What is the difficulty? Maybe their
>> are other solutions.
>
>I'm not sure what the proponent was getting at here. Having a
>hierarchical node also be an active newsgroup causes a variety of
>organization and performance problems with current news server
>implementations, most of which I would probably class as annoyances
>(but keep in mind that I would also classify having a group renamed
>as an annoyance for the reader and give it, as a complaint, about the
>same weight). The main reason why I think a renaming is a good idea is
>because it makes quite clear the hierarchical structure of the
>newsgroups and makes it clear to the reader that other newsgroups
>exist.
If the performance costs were that significant you would have required
one mass renaming and would not permit votes on the .misc renaming
(other than what the name is to be). Or you would have required the
news server implementations to fix their problems. It depends on
whether you think Usenet is a method of maintaining distributed Unix
filesystems on loosely coupled systems OR a method of communication
between individuals at a wide variety of locations. You would also
be able to demonstrate actual costs. How much is performance hampered
by NOT having news.groups.misc? And how much would performance be
helped by not blindly echoing namespace into 4,5, and
6-deep filesystems?
>[snip group charters]
>
>> The real charter for the proposed group rec.games.board.misc is in the
>> 1st sentence. There is no statement on posting of binaries,
>> conjectural history, advertising or marketing or buying/selling of
>> games, though clearly these are all relevant issues to the group. It
>> is clearly not the charter that would be presented if someone were >>
>> creating a group to split board games out of rec.games.misc.
>
>I'm quite sure that the proponent would be open to including a fuller
>and more comprehensive charter for the group if you are interested in
>writing one.
>BTW, rec.games.board currently doesn't have a charter.
If I'm going to be writing the charter for a group, I'm going to be
the one proposing the name, and I'm going to be listed as a proponent.
I think there are probably better people to do this though. Perhaps
a mailing list of interest persons can be developed in rec.games.board
that can develop long term plans for development of the hierarchy.
Would group-advice and tale approve an RFD that simply called for
a r.g.board.wif and a charter for r.g.board with no rename? Note
that the election could be bundled in a single package so there
would be no extra burden on UVV.
Where will the charter for rec.games.board.misc be stored? Bill Aten
has written that the n.a.n moderator has assigned r.g.b.wif rather than
r.g.b.reorg as the archive-name.
>> It really seems as if the wif proposal is being used as a stalking
>> horse for the .misc re-naming. Shouldn't any such reorganization come
>> from the users of rec.games.board? Note that there is one proposal for
>> reorganization of such long standing that it merits its own entry in
>> the killfile section of the rec.games.board FAQ.
>Why does it matter who presents a renaming proposal?
>> In checking the 1000+ articles on my newsserver for r.g.board, about
>> 1% deal with wif (excluding RFD discussion). It is not even in the top
>> 10 among individual games. Yet the wif proposal is being used to carry
>> the .misc renaming, With the huge number of games being discussed in
>> r.g.board, it would be very easy to miss the RFD.
>I highly doubt that. Most experienced readers have ^RFD: in a reverse
>killfile or otherwise monitor the groups they're interested in for RFDs,
>since their informational content is much higher than the average
>message and are quite likely to be of interest to anyone reading the
>groups to which they are posted.
Most readers have RFD in a reverse killfile and yet can't find a
subgroup or read the FAQ?
>> If this were solely a .misc renaming it would be expected that the RFD
>> would be posted to the 30 or so mailing lists listed in the r.g.board
>> FAQ.
>
>Why on earth would you do that? If it were solely a renaming of
>rec.games.board, the only group it should be posted to outside of
>news.announce.newgroups and news.groups is rec.games.board.
Why shouldn't it be distributed to all groups that would have an
interest in the matter? The proponent has claimed that the renaming
will make it easier for the mailing lists to convert to subgroups,
and suggest that one reason that they have not done so is because
the potential proponents have not wanted to go through the hassle
of including a .misc renaming to please group-advice or tale. If
you were on an A&A mailing list wouldn't you want to know if the
primary Usenet newsgroup for your area of interest were going to
be renamed?
Russ Allbery
>> * The group is already a .misc group in everything but name; most of
>> the current traffic is discussion of miscellaneous board games.
>> Renaming the group to reflect its actual content would make things
>> clearer.
> This is contentless. Almost _any_ newsgroup can be described as
> discussion of "miscellaneous" *. For example, rec.arts.sf.science
> can be described as discussion of miscellaneous science fiction
> technology/technical issues.
> Without at least some sibling groups discussing specific board games,
> this argument doesn't make sense.
> Where are all those sibling groups?
One is listed on the subject line. That's the reason why this is coming
up; a sibling group is being created. And there are already two: .ce and
.marketplace (as I'm sure you're aware). My understanding from the
proponent is that there are likely to be more as more mailing lists
convert to newsgroups.
>> * It would be consistent with other hierarchies, and consistency
>> overall makes the namespace more usable for people and makes it clearer
>> upon first glance which group discusses what.
> I don't see how anybody who could figure out what rec.games.board.misc
> meant couldn't figure out what rec.games.board meant.
Sure. rec.games.board means a newsgroup to discuss all board games. That
was easy.
It's also wrong.
That's what I meant by "makes it clearer upon first glance which group
discusses what." Without .misc, the name implies it's for all board
games. With .misc, it clarifies that there are other, more specific
groups, and some games and subjects should be discussed there instead.
>> * It helps with a variety of problems in organization and finding
>> things. For example, it's unclear to some users when, given groups
>> named rec.games.board.marketplace and rec.games.board, whether
>> marketplace postings should be posted to both newsgroups or just to
>> .marketplace.
> This argument might hold some water if r.g.b had a significant number of
> crossposts between r.g.b.marketplace and r.g.b.
> As it is, we've never had a significant problem with Xposts with
> .marketplace.
Yup. That's why it was a ways down in the list. I think it's a potential
problem which could develop (and I have seen newsgroups go along fine for
quite a while and then suddenly start having problems with issues like
that), but it hasn't developed yet.
> This rationale is therefore no reason at all for a rename.
By itself, no, it's not a very strong reason at the current time.
>> .misc also makes it much more obvious that there are additional
>> newsgroups, depending on the interface one uses for reading news. (And
>> there have been several for-sale ads posted to rgb over the past few
>> days, as well as one on Cosmic Encounter; I'm not sure if a renaming
>> would have helped that or not.)
> Such for sale adds will be posted in .misc groups as well, as you're
> no doubt aware.
Yes, I am. I think they tend to be posted there less often. But that's
based on a feeling of mine and subjective experience; I can't really back
it up with hard facts.
> These are considerations in favor of the name change, and is the reason
> why a personally slightly favor *.misc in general, but one which I feel
> is insignificant compared to the desires of r.g.b* users. After all, do
> r.g.b.marketplace users even _notice_ that they're being slightly
> delayed by r.g.b files?
I doubt it. Like I said, it's an annoyance, not a major problem, and
contributes more to just general news server slowness than it really slows
down reading any particular group.
>> There are a couple more reasons which would be more relevent were this
>> the first reorganization, but which still apply to some lesser extent:
>> * It makes it quite clear to readers that there are now more groups in
>> the hierarchy that they may wish to read.
> How did the reader find r.g.b in the first place? In an FAQ? No doubt
> it would mention the other newsgroups. By searching for newsgroups with
> "game" or "board" in it? They'd see the others as well.
There are a bunch of ways a user may find the group that don't make that
clear. Hierarchical search is one way (and there are a number of tools
for accessing newsgroups which use that). In a lot of cases, I've
discovered newsgroups because some article was crossposted from that group
into a group I read. Sometimes someone else will just recommend it.
There are plenty of ways which don't involve reading FAQs or grepping.
>> * It makes it clear to administrators that rec.games.board is now a
>> hierarchy rather than just a single group, making it more likely that
>> those administrators who do not automatically add new newsgroups will
>> add all of the hierarchy rather than just the root groop.
> These administrators would not "be doing their job". Just as those
> administrators which do not remove the original newsgroup would not "be
> doing their job".
No, that's simply not true. Administrators who maintain a partial feed
are certainly doing their job, and there are more sites with partial feeds
than with full feeds. If a site is taking rec.games.board and groups are
created under rec.games.board, the site won't automatically pick those up
and may not even notice them until a user realizes they are missing.
rmgroups make it quite explicit that a change is occurring.
>> Keep in mind that I'm trying to look at the issue from a long-term
>> perspective. Renaming a group does indeed produce some temporary pain,
>> but the group is likely to exist for a good decade in the future and
>> it's highly unlikely that it would ever need to be renamed again. I
>> think the increase in clarity in the long run is worth it.
> If you can get a majority of _rec.games.board*_ users to agree, then
> great. Otherwise, stop meddling with our discussions! Please!
Isaac, what do you think I'm trying to do? I'm not posting just to see
myself type here. I *am* trying to convince the readers of
rec.games.board; that's why I'm presenting arguments to try to support my
position. I find it rather strange that you would first tell me I should
try to convince the readers of rgb and then tell me to butt out; I can't
do both at once.
And in case you still haven't caught this, I am a reader of
rec.games.board and have been off and on for a while. I read a lot of
groups I don't post to. I'm personally most interested in analysis,
strategies, and alternate rules for classic games like Risk and Monopoly,
so I don't read much of rec.games.board; just pick out the occasional
interesting thread.
(I think I still have Dave van Domelen's rules for Illuminopoly around
here somewhere...I should dig them out.)
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Kenneth Arromdee <arro...@hops.cs.jhu.edu> writes:
> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>> The anime readership made its choice in a public vote.
> Only if you assume that the vote is a fair reflection of what the
> readership desired. I suppose you are going to tell me that people
> wanted soc.culture.scientists too?
Yup, I am going to tell you that. The fact that it turned out to be a bad
idea doesn't change the fact that people wanted it when it passed. (And
yes, you could potentially say the same thing for the raa renaming, but if
you are saying that at this point I really don't think you've given it a
chance.)
> Votes pass for many reasons, some related to procedural characteristics
> of the vote such as lack of discussion or combination of several votes
> on the same ballot.
For those who haven't seen this one when it's gone around before, Ken has
made a number of assertions about how groups pass and why that I can't
refute but that he also can't support. I personally think he's
misinterpreting the results, but I can't prove that. He also can't prove
I'm wrong. It's sort of a standoff.
But please don't claim lack of discussion in the affected group on this
one. I am honoring crossposting to rec.games.board.
Russ Allbery
Skipping things already addressed in other messages....
Jim Riley <Jim...@gnn.com> writes:
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> * It would be consistent with other hierarchies, and consistency
>> overall makes the namespace more usable for people and makes it clearer
>> upon first glance which group discusses what.
> The r.g.board FAQ explains all. Much of the traffic for individual
> games is in mailing lists. Other board games are not in the r.g.board
> hierarchy at all.
Many of the mailing lists are likely to eventually move to newsgroups.
That's a common pattern for mailing lists over time. Yes, there are other
board games that aren't under rec.games.board, but I don't quite see how
lack of consistency argues for not having consistency.
>> * It helps with a variety of problems in organization and finding
>> things. For example, it's unclear to some users when, given groups
>> named rec.games.board.marketplace and rec.games.board, whether
>> marketplace postings should be posted to both newsgroups or just to
>> .marketplace.
> Shouldn't they read the FAQ?
Of course they should. Do they? I'd prefer to give people as many clues
as reasonably possible.
> How does rec.games.board.misc make it more obvious that
> rec,games.diplomacy exists?
It doesn't. It makes it more obvious that rec.games.board.ce exists.
>> * It maintains a distinction between hierarchy and group in the newsgro
>> up structure. Whether or not you consider that important depends
>> largely on your view of Usenet's organizational structure.
> Did you oppose the creation of soc.culture.russian.moderated on this
> basis? One more nyet by a namespace purist and that disruption of
> namespace purity could have been stopped.
I would never oppose a newsgroup because it didn't include a .misc
renaming (apparently I'm less inclined to meddle with other people's
proposals than those who would vote against the entire proposal just
because they don't like a .misc renaming). I'll suggest that I think it
would be a good idea, and if they disagree, they disagree.
>> * It solves a wide variety of problems on the technical end of news
>> servers, all of which I would classify under "annoyances." Those
>> include making it easier to administer INN feeds, maintaining the
>> distinction between hierarchies and newsgroups in the file system
>> structure which is a big help if one is working in the spool area by
>> hand or with quick scripts, and slightly helping overall news server
>> performance since the server doesn't have to search through a large
>> directory for subdirectories when someone accesses the subgroup.
> But there is a potential extra directory access every time the main
> group is accessed.
Which is trivial compared to the cost of searching through a large
directory. Think about it.
Directory searching time is a real problem which other software systems
attempt to deal with (consider the kpathsea library for TeX -- it
explicitly suggests in the documentation that directories either contain
only directories or only files because of the performance hit you take
with mixed ones). Or consider this from the INN FAQ, part seven:
| 2. (this is more important than #1) Move the .overview files out of the
| /var/spool/news hierarchy. For example, moving the overview files into
| /var/spool/news/over.view made things fast enough on one machine that
| the problem went away.
[...]
| WHY THIS WORKS:
|
| Why does doing all this speed up overchan? overchan works by opening
| the proper ".overview" file, appending 1 line to it, then closing the
| file. If you have the ".overview" file in the same directory as 10000
| articles then opening the ".overview" file will take a huge amount of
| time. The open() call literally searches though about 5000 (half of
| 10000) file names to find ".overview". If you move your ".overview"
| files so that each one is in it's own directory, (say,
| /usr/spool/news/over.view/{group}/{name}/.overview) then open() is
| searching through 3 files ( ".", "..", and ".overview") to find 1 file.
| ( O(N/2) where N=10000 vs. N=3... and you thought those first year CS
| classes would never be useful!)
|
| There isn't much you can do to make the "append" and "close" steps much
| faster, except maybe install a PrestoServe or similar write-cache, and
| that won't help very much.
|
| Profiling overchan (with PureSoft's Quantify product) found that the
| open() call was around 80% of the execution time of overchan. That was
| reduced to 40% when I moved the ".overview" files to their own
| directory. With the change, overview's profiling statistics are pretty
| flat. (which is good).
The exact same problem that overchan has applies to finding subdirectories
in a directory full of articles.
> If this were a *real* problem it would be trivial to change the file
> structure.
Hah.
> Can you give me a measurement of the performance loss that is inflicted
> by news.groups.reviews on your server?
Nope. I have no idea how one would go about measuring such a thing. But
just because I can't give you hard numbers doesn't mean the problem
doesn't exist; it does indeed exist and is documented. It's just that the
Big Eight is about the only place anyone can do anything about it; the
nature of alt.* makes it damn near impossible to rename groups. I still
don't think it's a complete waste of effort, though; it helps some
especially with sites that carry only the Big Eight.
Of course, the long term solution is to find a better way to store news,
and I've been involved in a few discussions on that as well. But that
isn't nearly as easy as you imply.
Keep in mind, though, that this reason was fairly low on my list.
>> * It makes it quite clear to readers that there are now more groups in
>> the hierarchy that they may wish to read.
> They would have realized that by reading the FAQ.
You rely a lot on people reading the FAQ. My experience with that is that
it's better to give people as many additional aids as possible.
>> * It makes it clear to administrators that rec.games.board is now a
>> hierarchy rather than just a single group, making it more likely that
>> those administrators who do not automatically add new newsgroups will
>> add all of the hierarchy rather than just the root groop.
> Who fine tunes at a 3rd level hierarchy AND doesn't want to fine tune at
> a 4th level? They have already had to pick and choose to pick up
> r.g.chess.*, r.g.backgammon, r.g.go, r.g.diplomacy. Why should it be
> assumed that they want every single board game that comes along?
Obviously I'd argue that having all those groups (well, at least
diplomacy; you could make a case that chess, backgammon, and go are a
different sort of animal) outside of the rec.games.board hierarchy is
making life harder for them too.
> Aren't they simply going to take rec.games.* (and perhaps exclude
> r.g.bolo if they think it is a stealth binaries group)?
You'd be amazed how *selective* some people can be about their feeds. Go
grab a copy of the following file:
ftp://ftp.uu.net/networking/news/config/sys.gz
and take a look through it. I think you'll be surprised.
Russ Allbery
>> Looks like someone missed a group name change during a revision. Note
>> that .general is traditionally not used in newsgroup names due to the
>> fact that it's a special keyword in some older revisions of news
>> software and could cause some rather strange things to happen to
>> followup articles.
> Did group-advice or tale demand a renaming from an original proposal
> that was a simple creation of the wif group, or that had proposed
> .general rather than .misc?
I do not remember off-hand whether the original proposal was for .general
or not; I was not (at least if I remember correctly) the person who
responded to it. I'm sure Tale has it in his archives. But I'm fairly
certain I would remember if there was a "demand" and I definitely don't
remember that. Maybe you could ask the proponent?
> Note there are currently 400 *.general newsgroups available on my
> newsserver, so I wonder how valid the dictate against use of .general
> is. It is possible that it is the *most* frequent terminal name.
cyclone:~> grep '\.misc ' active | wc -l
300
cyclone:~> grep '\.general ' active | wc -l
19
Not from this view of Usenet. I think .misc is considerably better
established than .general and see no reason to introduce a new naming
convention that has never been used in the Big Eight before, regardless of
whether any technical problems with .general exist or not.
> Is the misstatement of purpose grounds for requesting that a corrected
> RFD be posted?
Nope; it would fall under the category of "minor change" and minor changes
are traditionally just made directly in the CFV.
> If a 2nd RFD was posted that corrected the misspelling of .misc,
> would there be any delay in the CFV?
The CFV can be issued 21 days after the first proposal or 10 days after
the most recent proposal, whichever is later.
> What about one that dropped the .misc renaming?
They would be treated the same.
> This assumes that there would be no delay in securing approval of the
> 2nd RFD by tale.
Proposals that no one has any objections to whatsoever are currently
experiencing delays just from sheer lack of time. It's possible that a
second RFD could be delayed for any number of reasons; I sincerely hope
that it wouldn't be and would do what I could to make sure it wasn't,
regardless of what it was for.
That's the reason I'm on group-advice; to try to help Tale work through
the number of proposals we receive and minimize delays.
> I have read where Peter da Silva had conducted several votes where
> multiple choices were permitted rather than a single up or down vote.
> Was this for a Big 8 proposal?
Yes, I believe it was, and I believe that Tale has said that he's willing
to accept those types of ballots. I don't believe a vote has been run
that way for quite some time, though.
>> It generally means "things not covered by other groups." Why that
>> bothers some people is quite frankly puzzles me. It's an extremely
>> accurate descriptive term in most cases.
[ snip long discussion of the meaning of .misc. Note that in the end you
arrived at very close to my definition. ]
> If you are filling out an expense voucher for a business trip, there
> will be separate categories for Transportation, Lodging, and Meals,
> and one for Miscellaneous other expenses (which may not have to be
> itemized if below some dollar amount).
[snip]
> In the rules for the game of Diplomacy, the XIVth (of XIV) section
> is called Miscellaneous. It includes a mixture of "rules" (how long
> a game will last, teaching new players the rules, alternative rules
> for less than 7 players, handling a player leaving the game, and 3
> minor rule clarifications).
> Note that in all these cases, Miscellaneous refers to a *mixture* of
> items for which there is no overall organizational theme, and which
> are of relatively minor importance or significance. Miscellaneous
> is where you put the bills that don't fit into your other piles and
> you don't want 4 piles with one bill each.
Exactly; misc means the things for which there is no overall
organizational scheme. Such as all topics not convered under other
organizations (other newsgroups). It's *exactly* like filling out an
expense report; anything not covered by other categories goes in misc.
Anything not convered by other newsgroups goes in .misc.
I think you've provided very good evidence to support the claim that the
meaning of .misc as used on Usenet is quite clear.
"Relatively minor importance or significance" is true in the sense that
the items in the .misc group have not produced enough traffic to warrant
creating a newsgroup explicitly for them. In other words, relative to
Cosmic Encounter, apparently discussion of other games is minor, since CE
warrants its own group and those other games don't.
> *.misc is an appropriate place for sub-subjects that don't have enough
> traffic to merit their own group and most of the other subjects do.
Which to me describes rec.games.board, and it sounds like it will become
even *more* descriptive of rec.games.board over time.
> Do you really believe that the thread "Can Internet be god?" should be
> relegated to a .misc group?
You mean "Can Internet Play God?" If you do, I find this comment highly
amusing given that that message was posted to a .misc group.
> If the performance costs were that significant you would have required
> one mass renaming and would not permit votes on the .misc renaming
> (other than what the name is to be).
I would? Well, first of all, I'm not in any position to do that. Second
of all, I'm definitely not fond of the idea of not allowing votes on the
issue; I'm confident in my ability in the long term to convince people
that it's a good idea. And finally, disallowing votes like that would
raise hell, possibly rightfully so.
> Or you would have required the news server implementations to fix their
> problems.
Hah.
> It depends on whether you think Usenet is a method of maintaining
> distributed Unix filesystems on loosely coupled systems OR a method of
> communication between individuals at a wide variety of locations. You
> would also be able to demonstrate actual costs. How much is performance
> hampered by NOT having news.groups.misc? And how much would performance
> be helped by not blindly echoing namespace into 4,5, and 6-deep
> filesystems?
You think all performance gains and problems can be attached to numbers?
If you do, I highly recommend you go take a look at the real world
problems people deal with; they aren't all textbook problems from some
algorithms course where you're neatly given all the numbers.
I've given you extensive quotes from the INN FAQ and other evidence
dealing with the issue in another post. And given all that, let me remind
you (*again*, but you seem to keep forgetting it) that I *don't* consider
the performance problem a "major" issue; I'm more concerned with the
hierarchical reasons for renaming.
> If I'm going to be writing the charter for a group, I'm going to be the
> one proposing the name, and I'm going to be listed as a proponent. I
> think there are probably better people to do this though. Perhaps a
> mailing list of interest persons can be developed in rec.games.board
> that can develop long term plans for development of the hierarchy.
Sounds like a great idea to me. I'm all for it.
> Would group-advice and tale approve an RFD that simply called for
> a r.g.board.wif and a charter for r.g.board with no rename?
Probably not, because Tale has in the past stated that he doesn't want to
accept proposals which do nothing except modify a charter. It's an area
that the newsgroup creation process has not previously been used for, and
he isn't sure he wants to see it expand into there.
> Where will the charter for rec.games.board.misc be stored? Bill Aten
> has written that the n.a.n moderator has assigned r.g.b.wif rather than
> r.g.b.reorg as the archive-name.
I'm not sure why that name was chosen. You'd have to ask Tale; he assigns
them. I assume he has some standard way of doing so.
[ It would be easy to miss the RFD. ]
>> I highly doubt that. Most experienced readers have ^RFD: in a reverse
>> killfile or otherwise monitor the groups they're interested in for
>> RFDs, since their informational content is much higher than the average
>> message and are quite likely to be of interest to anyone reading the
>> groups to which they are posted.
> Most readers have RFD in a reverse killfile and yet can't find a
> subgroup or read the FAQ?
No, most *experienced* readers. Read my message more slowly. You'll
notice that's exactly what happened; several people found the RFD and
started a thread on the subject, and that thread has also been posted to
rec.games.board. As a result, there is lots of traffic about the renaming
on the group and there's almost no way anyone could miss it. (Yes, Ken,
there are times when I definitely see your point.)
But the people I am trying to convince are the rgb regulars, whereas the
people the renaming will help are new readers. New readers are highly
unlikely to see or understand the RFD/CFV process regardless, even if you
send it out to every group you can think of.
> Why shouldn't it be distributed to all groups that would have an
> interest in the matter? The proponent has claimed that the renaming
> will make it easier for the mailing lists to convert to subgroups, and
> suggest that one reason that they have not done so is because the
> potential proponents have not wanted to go through the hassle of
> including a .misc renaming to please group-advice or tale. If you were
> on an A&A mailing list wouldn't you want to know if the primary Usenet
> newsgroup for your area of interest were going to be renamed?
Point. If you're worried about that, sending out pointers may be a good
idea. (CFVs aren't generally sent to mailing lists anyway, due to other
concerns, so that isn't an option.)
kj
Rick Heli wrote:
>
> In article <152...@cup.portal.com> John_Da...@cup.portal.com writes:
> >I agree with the other RGB regulars that renaming RGB to .misc is un-called
> >for, and that if this is voted on at all, it should be in a separate CFV.
> >
> >John David Galt Visualize monkeys flying out my butt!
>
> Agreed. And would rec.games.board.wif be so awful? Save some of us a lot
> of typing... :)
Ditto.
Randy Shipp
Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>No, it assumes that a group which discusses miscellaneous topics should be
>named .misc. In other words, it assumes that a group which discusses
>miscellaneous board games should be named rec.games.board.misc, rather
>than rec.games.board which implies that it discusses *all* board games and
>board game related topics (which is not the case, since it doesn't discuss
>Cosmic Encounter, buying and selling of games, and if the new proposal
>passes, World in Flames).
I may not have been reading this newsgroup for years, but in the many
months I have been, I've yet to hear or see anyone actually referred
to rec.games.board.ce. I've never heard anyone scold or discourage
some one because they discussed CE in r.g.b.
I wonder...is WiF is split from the rest of r.g.b...and if, as you
suggest, WiF will only be discussed in r.g.b.WiF...how will
"miscellaneous" boardgame fans who might today become interested in
WiF by watching the discussions about it in r.g.b ever find out about
it? Heck, I LIKE CE, and I never make it over to that group. Noone
is just going to subscribe to WiF if they don't already know what it
is...and it seems that's bad for the discussion.
Why, with all these fancy threaded news-readers out there is it
necessary to fragment these discussions so much? It almost seems like
an ego trip (the reader is left to decide whose). This newsgroup can
regularly place hundreds of messages in my header list each day, and
it's no sweat for me to simply opt not to read those articles which
have headers that don't interest me. But the benefit of not having
rec.games.board.sl and rec.games.board.asl and rec.games.board.risk
and rec.games.board.pelopenessian_war and...on and on and on...is that
I can see headers about "Re: Ancient Naval Games" and get interested
and follow it.
Inform this uneducated person why it's necessary to split the group...
Randy...
rsh...@flash.net
Colin Douthwaite
Psychohist (psych...@aol.com) wrote:
>The traffic on r.g.b is not high enough that a split would normally be
>looked upon kindly. Furthermore a wif/misc split would be incredibly
>uneven - wif posts constitute no more than about half a dozen posts a day,
>not the scores or hundreds that normally justify a new news group. This
>causes me to wonder if the wif/misc proposal is getting more favorable
>treatment solely because of the rename of r.g.b to r.g.b.misc.
>I think the argument that r.g.b regulars are likely to be aware of this
>discussion is specious. Regulars of most news groups are generally
>uninterested in news.groups politics, and only pay attention to it when
>they have to. My guess is that most r.g.b readers, like myself, ignored
>this thread in r.g.b as soon as they got to the word 'worldinflames',
>since only a minority of r.g.b readers are interested in any one game. (I
>only finally looked at the thread because I had too much time on my hands
>today.) They are therefore likely to be unaware that there is a renaming
>of r.g.b in the works, and even more unaware that there is a group charter
>change involved - potentially a bigger issue, as I was not aware of until
>I finally took the time to come over and sift through the thousands of
>messages here.
I think you have made a very good point here.
Embedding of group removals/renamings into RFD proposals for new
groups are easily overlooked and it is vital that diligent readers
of the newsgroup alert the readership that their newsgroup is going
to be rmgrouped/renamed.
Renamings/rmgroupings should be in clearly marked separate RFDs and
CFVs and the discussion should be in the affected newsgroup(s).
Renaming/rmgrouping of an existing newsgroup can be considered an
overt offensive act against the readers of that newsgroup.
How many "rec.games.board" readers do you think may be unaware
that it is proposed to rename their newsgroup and turn it into a
subgroup named "rec.games.board.misc" ?
How many will see the CFV ( Call For Votes ) when it is issued ?
It does not stay around long on most news servers these days
if traffic flow is high. Expiry times can be anything from
24 hours to 5 days.
Bye,
Colin Douthwaite
Psychohist (psych...@aol.com) wrote:
>The traffic on r.g.b is not high enough that a split would normally be
>looked upon kindly. Furthermore a wif/misc split would be incredibly
>uneven - wif posts constitute no more than about half a dozen posts a day,
>not the scores or hundreds that normally justify a new news group. This
>causes me to wonder if the wif/misc proposal is getting more favorable
>treatment solely because of the rename of r.g.b to r.g.b.misc.
>
>I think the argument that r.g.b regulars are likely to be aware of this
>discussion is specious. Regulars of most news groups are generally
>uninterested in news.groups politics, and only pay attention to it when
>they have to. My guess is that most r.g.b readers, like myself, ignored
>this thread in r.g.b as soon as they got to the word 'worldinflames',
>since only a minority of r.g.b readers are interested in any one game. (I
>only finally looked at the thread because I had too much time on my hands
>today.) They are therefore likely to be unaware that there is a renaming
>of r.g.b in the works, and even more unaware that there is a group charter
>change involved - potentially a bigger issue, as I was not aware of until
>I finally took the time to come over and sift through the thousands of
>messages here.
>
>Warren J. Dew
Colin Douthwaite
Max Frank Natzet (mf...@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU) wrote:
>cf...@southern.co.nz writes:
>> Agreed, but the RFD discussion for this RFD has shown very little
>> support for the "worldinflames" subgroup...nor did the support for
> Nobody is arguing against it,
Nobody ? not quite...
In Message-ID: <4okkcv$r...@newsbf02.news.aol.com> dated 30 May 1996
psych...@aol.com (Psychohist) wrote:
>> The traffic on r.g.b is not high enough that a split would
>> normally be looked upon kindly. Furthermore a wif/misc split
>> would be incredibly uneven - wif posts constitute no more than
>> about half a dozen posts a day, not the scores or hundreds that
>> normally justify a new news group.
and...
In Message-ID: <4ojl9l$4...@suneng3.crosfield.co.uk> dated 30 May 1996
a...@crosfield.co.uk (Adam Huby) wrote:
>> I'll be voting in favour of the .misc rename (and abstaining on wif).
You wrote:
> There are mailing lists full of people who are about to loose
> their list and need a new home.
Why should a sub newsgroup be created just because a Mailing List
collapses ?
It has been said that there are only about 7 worldinflames posts a
day in the existing newsgroup...if the Mailing List people did not
or could not contribute previously why should they be considered now ?
How do we know the Mailing List people can access newsgroups ?
Bye,
Colin Douthwaite
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) wrote:
>In news.groups, Dave Casper <cas...@axcrna.cern.ch> writes:
>> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes...
>
>>> If the readers of rec.games.board don't want the group renamed, they
>>> can certainly vote against it.
>
>> ..and still be outvoted by a bunch of pocket-protector types from
>> news.groups with nothing better to do than try imposing their ivory
>> tower theories of USENET on groups they don't even read.
>History doesn't bear out this conclusion. Every .misc renaming that I've
>seen pass had solid support in the group that was being renamed.
What ? To make that assertion you must have been wearing totally
opaque spectacles with your eyes shut in a room with no light ! *8-(
Bye,
Russ Allbery
In news.groups, Colin Douthwaite <cf...@southern.co.nz> writes:
> Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) wrote:
>> History doesn't bear out this conclusion. Every .misc renaming that
>> I've seen pass had solid support in the group that was being renamed.
> What ? To make that assertion you must have been wearing totally opaque
> spectacles with your eyes shut in a room with no light ! *8-(
Making assertions without facts doesn't prove anything, Colin. You
claimed that the raa reorg wasn't supported by the readership and I
produced a list of regulars on the group who voted for it. If you have
more evidence that hasn't already been refuted, let's hear it.
Drew Fudenberg
>
> In response to the following:
>
> > could the same end be achieved by "promoting" w-i-f to the same level as
> > board, that is "rec.games.w-i-f"?
Russ Allbery wrote:
>
> Yes, those concerns would. However, naming it that would lose the
> information that "worldinflames" is a board game, which I think is a bad
> idea. You're likely to pick up a lot of interested readers when the group
> is first created, and when people search through the list of newsgroups on
> "board", just from the people out there who are interested in board games
> in general but may not be aware of worldinflames in particular. Those
> people are much less likely to check out, or even see, a World in Flames
> group which isn't under rec.games.board since they're looking for board
> games they may like.
>
> As long as we're comparing small gains and benefits, I think this one is
insubstantial. I predict that new followers of the rec.games hierarchy will
check out all of the next levels except those they've heard of and know they
don;t want to follow. after all, most board game players aren't dogmatic about
playing -only- board games.
Adam Huby
In article <4orqbn$b...@orm.southern.co.nz>,
Colin Douthwaite <cf...@southern.co.nz> wrote:
>Adam Huby (a...@crosfield.co.uk) wrote:
>>In article <4oiqnv$1...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
>>Stephen Graham <gra...@maxwell.ee.washington.edu> wrote:
>>>In article <4od28v$o...@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>,
>>>Alec Habig <aha...@bigbang.astro.indiana.edu> wrote:
>>>>You're the only person I recognize who likes the idea. All of the other people
>>>>posting in favor of the rename seem to be news.groups denizens.
>>>
>>>I'm also in favor of renaming to r.g.b.misc. While it inconveniences
>>>current readership briefly, it has long term benefits. Consistency in
>>>names across a hierarchy make it simpler for many people to find the
>>>group they're interested in.
>
>
>>FWIW, I agree with this; consistency is a Good Thing (TM). I'll be voting
>>in favour of the .misc rename (and abstaining on wif).
>
>greatly appreciate you-all renaming their existing newsgroup to
>*.misc to indulge your ideological views on what is a Good Thing (TM).
You cretinous twerp ! I'm a regular reader and poster to r.g.b., which
I'm 99% certain is more than can be said for yourself (you can't even get
the name of the group right!).
The only context in which I recognise your name is from horrendous
ideological flame-wars in news.groups on those infrequent occasions I've
had to visit it due to ongoing RFDs concerning groups I'm interested in.
I'm quite certain that the regular readers of "rec.boards.games" (sic)
can make their own minds up about this without the incessant noise that
you appear to be determined to add.
>Actually "renaming" is a misnomer for what actually occurs. The
>parent newsgroup is rmgrouped and a new _subgroup_ is created which
>is in no way equivalent to the original parent newsgroup. The *.misc
>group becomes merely a subgroup for "anything else"
This paragraph makes no sense whatever. The new group sounds precisely
equivalent to the original one to me (except for the possible removal
of w-i-f threads, of course). Who _cares_ what the precise procedure
is for creating it ?
>So if you vote for the renaming you are voting to destroy and remove
>an existing newsgroup desired by other users. That is an offensive
>action against other Net users and is unacceptable !
Only if you've got an ideological axe to grind.
Look, as a regular user, _I_ think that renaming the group to r.g.b.m will
make it fit into the overall UseNet namespace better, and make it easier
for new users to find. I'll be voting for it on those grounds, which sound
eminently sensible to me. Others may not, which is fine.
But please stop making wildly inaccurate assumptions about my motives
and background.
Oh yes, while I'm here....
Almost 50% of the articles in r.g.b on my system are now made up of
this entirely off-topic thread. It's almost certainly far too late to
put the genie back in the bottle, but _please_ try to restrict follow-ups
to their correct home, news.groups.
Thanks,
Adam
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
One day, my son, these views will be Crosfield's (but for the moment they're
mine, all mine).
--
Adam Huby Crosfield Electronics Ltd Hemel Hempstead HP2 7RH U.K.
uucp: a...@crosfield.co.uk
phone: +44 1442 230000 ext 5251 or +44 1442 345251
fax: +44 1442 343362 telex: 827530 CROSEL G
Craig Bertolucci
Why just a WIF split? There really aren't that many posts about it.
If I had to break up rgb it would be into r.g.b.wargames , r.g.b.space, and
r.g.b.fantasy. I would also like to know if a split causes an increase
in the posts about that topic? For example, maybe there would be more
posts about Talisman in a r.g.b.fantasy newsgroup than there are in this one.
As to the .misc, It wouldn't make me feel any less important, how 'bout you?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Craig Bertolucci University of South Florida
Graduate Student Representative Department of Chemistry
MBIG Research Group Tampa, Florida
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Thomas Krog
In article <4oiqnv$1...@nntp5.u.washington.edu> gra...@maxwell.ee.washington.edu (Stephen Graham) writes:
>I'm also in favor of renaming to r.g.b.misc. While it inconveniences
>current readership briefly, it has long term benefits. Consistency in
>names across a hierarchy make it simpler for many people to find the
>group they're interested in.
Change is not always progress. Consistency is a means to an end, not an
end in itself. Unless people are having difficulty finding the group,
changing the name will be of little, if not negative, utility. I
understand the urge to tinker is great, but when something is working
properly, more often than not tinkering with it will only lead to its
collapse.
-Drew Krog
Andrew Thomas Krog
In article <qum3f4f...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes:
>In news.groups, Petri Juhani Piira <pp...@alpha.hut.fi> writes:
>
>> And it is very strange the name is .worldinflames, instead of .wif
>
>I don't find that at all strange, given that a new player of the game is
>likely, when looking for posts about it, to search for "flames" or "world"
>and may never think to try WIF. WIF may work fine for those who already
>know what the group's about, but it's pretty bad for those who don't.
Someone's dreaming here. People don't simply sit up in the dead of night
and think "my God, I simply must know about this World in Flames thing",
run a quick scan of the Usenet groups, find nothing titled
"worldinflames" and then go "Oh, well" and forget about it. If people
are supposedly clever enough to figure out how to get to the Usenet
groups, they can damn well figure out how to find a WiF subgroup. "Gee,
rec.games.board sounds kinda like where board games would be. I'll ask
them if they know. Or, better still, maybe I'll check the F.A.Q. list."
I hardly think that rec.games.board.wif is hiding the ball anywhere.
Typing out "worldinflames" not only is overly lengthy and tedious, but it
insults the intelligence of Usenet participants world wide. For crying
out loud, give people some credit. Besides, what if their primary search
isn't in English? Should we also have a "WeltinFlammen" subgroup?
Where, pray tell, should the line be drawn? Brevity is universal, but
verbosity must be translated....
Thus, I think rec.games.board.wif is not entirely objectionable, although
it will create the slippery slope for every other board game to demand its
own little subgroup too (I know the WiF volume is large; I bailed on the
list because I couldn't clear out my box in time to actually read the
posts). But why rename r.g.b. to r.g.b.misc? It seems rather pointless
to do so. If it is the primary board group, isn't it already .misc by
definition? Why are we complicating the group's string with superfluous
terms? What's next, a Usenet prefix for each group to avoid confusing
those who might think they are in WWW?
The whole thing strikes me as being vaguely similar to the Nazi approach
to things in the 1930's and 40's. "Ordnung Muss Sein!"/"There must be
order!" Unless I can be shown *why* we *need* rec.games.board.misc, I
cannot be convinced that a change should be made to make things "easier
in the future" any more than I'd be convinced that having my Social
Security number tatooed on my arm would make things "easier in the
future". The real question, I think, is "easier" for whom....
-Drew Krog
Tom Cleaveland
In article <4osk52$d...@sp115.ocs.lsu.edu>, k...@bit.csc.lsu.edu (Isaac Kuo)
wrote:
>Hold on. If the WiF mailing list users want to use Usenet Netnews so
>badly, why aren't there a lot of WiF mailing list users saying so by
>posting their support in this thread (either in r.g.b or news.groups)?
Unfortunately expressions of support for the new newsgroup seem to be
drowned out in the furor over the rgb renaming.
>I'm sure _some_ people posting here must be on that mailing list, right?
>
>Please speak up. Otherwise, I can't really believe that they want
>to move their discussion to a newsgroup. And I can't very well browse
>the discussion on the mailing list to find out, can I?
Fair enough. I subscribe to the mailing list, and I support the creation
of the "rec.games.board.worldinflames" newsgroup. As for the ".misc"
renaming, I haven't made up my mind one way or the other, or if I should
even vote on that part of the proposal. I have a great deal of sympathy
for the argument in favor of leaving that issue to the regular
subscribers, though.
I have also forwarded your posting to the WiF mailing list.
>>Unfortunately, the renaming of r.g.b itself is useless. Luckily, we can vote
>>for the good proposal, and against the lousy one.
>
>That's not exactly the way things work. Already there have been some
>people posting in this thread who have said they'll vote for the name
>change even though they don't use rec.games.board (and presumably
>wouldn't use r.g.b.misc either--the name change doesn't change the
>content).
Is there such a thing as a "conditional proposal"? For example, could it
be proposed that ONLY IF one votes FOR the creation of rgb.worldinflames
could one cast a vote on renaming rgb to rgb.misc?
Tom C.
--
Tom Cleaveland - Tom.Cle...@Hitchcock.org
Programmer/Analyst - Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
Richard Gadsden
Russ Allbery wrote:
>
> In news.groups, Jim Riley <Jim...@gnn.com> writes:
> > Russ Allbery wrote:
>
> >> Looks like someone missed a group name change during a revision. Note
> >> that .general is traditionally not used in newsgroup names due to the
> >> fact that it's a special keyword in some older revisions of news
> >> software and could cause some rather strange things to happen to
> >> followup articles.
>
> > Did group-advice or tale demand a renaming from an original proposal
> > that was a simple creation of the wif group, or that had proposed
> > .general rather than .misc?
>
> I do not remember off-hand whether the original proposal was for .general
> or not; I was not (at least if I remember correctly) the person who
> responded to it. I'm sure Tale has it in his archives. But I'm fairly
> certain I would remember if there was a "demand" and I definitely don't
> remember that. Maybe you could ask the proponent?
>
.general was a better name but cannot be used any more,
for technical reasons that date back to the Great Renaming.
.general was my original proposal, and had got a reponse from
members of r.g.b somewhat better than .misc did (which was
why I proposed it)
[Advice about sending pointers to the mailing lists in the r.g.b
FAQ noted; such pointers will be sent where possible.]
--
Richard Gadsden C.R.G...@politics.hull.ac.uk
"I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right
to say it" - Voltaire
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Andrew Thomas Krog
In article <qum4tow...@cyclone.Stanford.EDU> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes:
>Steffan O'Sullivan <s...@io.com> writes:
>
>> This argument has been gone through on many groups. Last year, at least
>> one group rebelled - and won. The proposers of soc.women.lesbian-and-bi
>> were told by "advisors" that they had to include a proposal to rename
>> soc.women to soc.women.misc, and they said, "No way. We don't have to."
>> Sure enough, soc.women.lesbian-and-bi passed without having to rename
>> soc.women.
>
>And the proponent of rec.games.board.worldinflames was *not* told that he
>"had" to rename rec.games.board. He was told that we think it's a good
>idea and recommend it, and that advice he was free to either take or
>leave.
Ah. I'll bet it was "an offer he couldn't refuse", eh? Nothing like the
power of suggestion from those in positions of authority. "You know,
this is only a suggestion, but if you put $50.00 in my pocket, I
think I can guarantee that permit you've been looking for."
Stuff it. It's a case of quid pro quo, nothing more. If the
"organizers" of the net are really interested in fixing things, try the
whole alt.* category. Please, do something more useful than micromanage
in places where it is neither wanted nor needed.
-Drew Krog