Aucbarpa.583 net.news utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:glickman Sun Dec 27 20:45:32 1981 pers and fpa I'm not sure there will be that much debate about newsgroups that go in pers and fpa and newsgroups that don't. Perhaps I'm biased since (perhaps because I'm an egghead academician crony) people bitch at me about "essential" and "proper" machine use. Basically, a line can be drawn between newsgroups that discuss computers and those that don't. This in itself would simplify things a great deal. Beyond that, a couple of things get hazy. For instance, does telecommunications (fa.telecom) of general interest to most sites? Mark didn't think so, but seeing that all sites on the net receive news using some form of telecommunications, I would think so. There are other newsgroups that would undoubtedly be subjects of debate, althought not as many as people have implied. Most sites on the net now (at least the major distributors) would probably carry pers and fpa anyway. Any sites that might be severed from pers and fpa can probably get them from other sites. This proposal would encourage more restrictive sites to join the net since it would be easy for them to screen out "improper" material. It's a bit of a hassle to change all the sys files I admit, but I believe this proposal would solve one of the major objections to USENET ("But it's just garbage!") and would further the expansion of the net a great degree in the long run. Matt ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.