Newsgroups: comp.os.linux From: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o) Subject: Alternatives to splitting the newsgroup Reply-To: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o) Organization: The Internet Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1992 19:29:27 GMT As one of the original instigators of alt.os.linux, and then comp.os.linux, I would like to join with Linus and arl in saying that splitting comp.os.linux would be a BAD idea. There are many good reasons for keeping c.o.l. as one newsgroup, and various people have given them already: It would cut the Fidonet relay out; it would leave the 140 or so people who receive c.o.l via the Linux Digests out in the cold. Speaking as someone who just finished catching up on 3 weeks of comp.os.linux articles (and every single article flashed on my screen, although I deleted most of them within a second or two), I find it hard to sympathize with the people who grouse about not being able to catch up day-to-day. It doesn't take that long to skim an article, and then hit the 'd' key (or the 'n' key or 'k' key; whatever); and if you have a smart newsreader, it becomes even easier. Nevertheless, it is true that the traffic on this list has been growing, and it would be good to figure out some ways to make this less of an issue. I have two suggestions that might help improve things. First of all, I would suggest that the Meta-FAQ, which Lars Wirzenius is planning on maintaining and posting periodically, contain a section about Usenet etiquette. Something to remind people about the charter of the group; to ask them to take personal attacks to email; to ask people, whenever possible, to take replies via email and them posting summaries of the responses to the group. These are simple things which every Usenet participant should know; but a little reminder never hurts. The second suggestion I have is based on something which the TeX mailing list uses to control novice questions. That is to recruit a bunch of volunteers that are willing to answer novice questions via email. Novices would be directed to ask their questions to a magic mailing address. This magic mailing address would direct their question to ONLY ONE of the volunteers, and going down the list to the next volunteer for the next questions, and so on. If you have sufficient volunteers, each volunteer would only get to answer one question every couple of days or weeks, so it shouldn't be an onerous burden. If the volunteer who gets the question can't answer it, he or she can escalate the question to the entire list of volunteers, and if none of the volunteers can field it, the question can then go to the newsgroup. I am willing to write some software to develop this question fielding system for Linux, if there are enough volunteers to make this system go. Given the number of questions, there should be at least 20 or 30 volunteers, and the more the merrier. So..... if you are interested in helping provide manpower for such a scheme, please send me mail with the your email address. Also, please let me know which categories of questions you would be interested in fielding. It may make sense to split the question queues into different topics: GCC, X, Kernel, and other might be one such breakdown. - Ted
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux Path: nntp.hut.fi!funic!fuug!mcsun!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu! yale.edu!yale!gumby!destroyer!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!usc!sdd.hp.com!mips! darwin.sura.net!blaze.cs.jhu.edu!bogstad From: bogstad@blaze.cs.jhu.edu (Bill Bogstad) Subject: Re: Alternatives to splitting the newsgroup Message-ID: <1992Jul20.213356.8175@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> Organization: Johns Hopkins Computer Science Department, Baltimore, MD References: <1992Jul20.192927.4438@athena.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1992 21:33:56 GMT Lines: 22 In article <1992Jul20.192927.4438@athena.mit.edu> tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o) writes: >As one of the original instigators of alt.os.linux, and then >comp.os.linux, I would like to join with Linus and arl in saying that >splitting comp.os.linux would be a BAD idea. There are many good >reasons for keeping c.o.l. as one newsgroup, and various people have >given them already: It would cut the Fidonet relay out; it would leave >the 140 or so people who receive c.o.l via the Linux Digests out in the >cold. Those same arguments could be used to suggest that the special Linux LISTSERVs for SCSI, X?, etc. should be done away with as well. As someone who prefers to handle must information sources via a news interface, I'm being left out in the cold. By the way, I'm not saying that your arguments are without merit or that special LISTSERVs are necessarily a bad idea. Ways of making a split work with the Digests are possible. Multiple submission addresses (one for each newsgroup) are one possibility. Bill Bogstad P.S. The rest of your article had some other great ideas about a special address to handle novice questions etc. It was just your opening paragraph with which I had a problem.
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux From: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o) Subject: Re: Alternatives to splitting the newsgroup Reply-To: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o) Organization: The Internet Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 00:46:37 GMT No, actually, it would be very hard support the new groups. There are two problems. The first is cross-posting. People do it a lot, no matter how you try to stop them, and with mail, you can't eliminate the duplicates without a lot of work, and then you have to decide where the article should go. The second problem is that having the digest track several groups would require a lot of changes to the perl script as it is currently written; the assumption is fairly strong that there is only one newsgroup. You could have separate digests for the different newsgroups, but that's really unwieldy, and it still doesn't solve the crossposting problem. Again, I really don't think the current traffic on the newsgroups warrant splitting the newsgroup. And if we implement my suggestion of draining off the newbie questions by directing them at a list of volunteers, such that each question goes to only one volunteer, I think we can further decrease volume on this list so that splitting it is really not justified. So far, just under 20 people have volunteered, and all of the responses which I've gotten is positive. If we can get a couple more volunteers, we can definitely get this service off the ground. So if you haven't signed up yet, and you like helping people, I ask you to please sign up! All you have to do is send me mail stating your email address and what areas you feel most comfortable answering questions. - Ted