Aihps3.196
net.news.group
utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!houxi!ihnss!ihps3!pcl
Thu Apr 15 09:37:09 1982
Re: new groups
This is in response to Greg Guthrie's (ihuxp!grg) article on "new groups"
which was recently (mis-) posted to 'net.unix' (a non-existent news
group).
There are several reasons one should not post articles to non-existent
newsgroups, and that the formation of new newsgroups be preceeded by
some (limited) amount of discussion. As I see it, violating these
standards:
- Wastes disk space and i-nodes, through having unused
directories. While Greg points out that these directories can
be removed, having to do so is an administrative expense that I
regard as a waste of (my) time.
- Diminishes the utility of Usenet. The whole point of having
news categorized into newsgroups is to provide enough structure
for people to be able to select what they want to see. The news
group structure and the process for creating new newsgroups are
not arbitrary conventions left over from ancient history - they
reflect the group's consensus of the best means to provide this
structure that we (the Usenet community) have been able to come
up with!
- Undermines attempts at documentation. (This is really another
facet of the previous point.) Some of us (but apparently not
enough) try to maintain an up-to-date, annotated list of
newsgroups for all of the users on our machine. Use of
newsgroups with no clear charter, that are indistinguishable
in purpose from existing newsgroups, and/or that are never
generally announced make this effort nearly impossible. I
should note here that if more sites maintained an accurate
'ngfile' (WITHOUT 'all' in it), novice users would be held to
existing, agreed upon newsgroups. I have found it much less of
a hassle to update our 'ngfile' as needed than to remove
spurious newsgroups.
Paul Lustgarten
Usenet administrator for ihps3
Bell Labs - Indian Hill
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