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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