From: cstone@husc8.harvard.edu (christopher stone)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: 2nd RFD: rec.arts.startrek.reviews moderated
Date: 27 Jan 93 16:46:00 GMT
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

In article <C1H87M.4xy@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> hades@Dartmouth.Edu writes:
>cstone@husc8.harvard.edu (christopher stone) writes:
>
>>In article <1jvvosINNeq3@rodan.UU.NET> koreth@hyperion.com (Steven
>Grimm) writes:

>>Yes, I agree.  I think that while r.a.s.reviews is a worthwhile proposal,
>>the biggest problem with the r.a.s. groups is that .current is just too
>>big.  We will have to find a way of reducing traffic there, probably
>>by splitting it.  I have been in favor or a ds9/tng style split, and
>>there have been other proposals as well.

>    The single biggest problem with rec.arts.startrek.* is that people
>have no idea where a particular article should be posted. This is the
>reason that .current is so big.

That is exactly why we need a split of .current along ds9 and tng lines.
New posters would have a much clearer idea of where to post.  As things
stand now, a new poster sees the names ".misc" and ".current" and has
little idea of how to classify posts based on that nomenclature.  But
if he or she saw ".tng" and ".ds9" on the screen, the criteria for
determining what articles belong where would be readily familiar.
That is, the labels ".tng" and ".ds9" are  a lot less ambiguous than
".current" and ".misc" alone.

Also, if confusion alone explains why .current is so big, the how
do you account for the fact that the volume of traffic in .current
has grown so much in the weeks since DS9 premiered?
Confusion still existed before DS9, presumably.

>>Now, here's the point: I will vote for the creation of .reviews *if*
>>people generally agree to get serious about splitting .current in some
>>way after the .reviews group is created.  Above it was noted that .reviews
>>does not attempt to address the problem of .current, and this is fine by
>>me --  BUT, I can easily envision an rfd for splitting .current in a few
>>weeks time in which the main objection is, "Hey!  We just created a new
>>startrek newsgroup, .reviews.  Just how many newsgroups do we need?"
>
>    Did you see the report that someone did that tallied the stats of
>the article subjects in .current? It clearly showed that .current should
>be about 60% - 75% smaller than it currently is. All of the rest of
>the traffic should have been posted to one of the other ras.* groups,
>and about >50% of .current's traffic should have been posted to .misc.
>This is where the problem is, and splitting .current isn't going to make
>this any better. Until people realize where their posts are supposed to
>go it won't matter how many groups Star Trek has.

Yes, and there are three objections:
1) Whether or not it should be smaller, the reality is that .current
has the volume it has.  Realistically, we are not going to be able
to educate new or infrequent posters about better prefix lines.
Realistically, we are not going to be able to educate them about
the difference between .misc and .current if we have not done so by now.
We must therefore come up with some mechanism that makes the criteria
for determining where to post immediately clear to new posters.  IMHO,
the labels "ds9" and "tng," because they are so familiar, do this.

2) The study really had no control; it analyzed traffic only after
DS9 premiered, not before.  Therefore, it is plausible that DS9's
premiere accounts for much of the traffic in .current.  I would
add that this is a reasonable hypothesis in that traffic there
has skyrocketed since the premiere.

3) We also have to define what the size of an ideal newsgroup is.
IMHO, if things like "rec.arts.breadmachines" warrants a separate
newsgroup, then ds9 does.  It would clearly carry at least 50 posts
a day, and probably a lot more.

>>Indeed, when someone first pointed out that proposals to create .reviews
>>and to split .current into ds9 and tng branches were *not* mutually
>>exclusive, and I posted in support of this idea, the reaction of 
>>many people was just that -- "How many groups does Trek need?"
>
>    The groups that we have now (with the probable addition of .reviews)
>really is all that is needed for Star Trek.

This is the fundamental contention that it seems supporters of .reviews
can't shake, and it is what disturbs me.  Remember, it is plausible
to envision the objection that "We just created .reviews, hence we
don't need any new startrek newsgroups!"  It seems to me that
despite the professed statements in the 2nd rfd, people seem
to be substituting .reviews for other mechanisms of reducing traffic
in .current -- sort of "if you can't beat them, join them," or,
more explicitly, "we've given up on .current; let's create our
own group, a sort of mini-current, so we don't have to read
.current anymore."  I say, if you don't want to read current,
you should have that option, which is why .reviews sounds like a good
idea; but that you must still address the problem of reforming current.

>>I say it needs however many as it needs.  As the .reviews proposal
>>stands, I like it, but only if people really adhere to the bit
>>about it *not* being a substitute for splitting .reviews.  I will
>>look at the reaction to this 2nd rfd and this post, and if people
>>seem to realize that the two proposals are *not* mutually exclusive
>>and seem to indicate that they are serious about discussing ways to
>>split .current, then I'll vote for it.  If I get reactions like the
>>ones discussed above, then I won't, since I believe the most urgent
>>problem we must deal with is the volume of traffic in .current.

>    Again, the reason for the traffic volume in .current is the fact
>that people have no idea where their posts should go. There is no reason
>that .current should be bigger than all of the other Star Trek
>discussion groups combined. The most urgent problem in .current is
>the lack of knowledge possed by it's posters, and until this is dealt
>with any other "solution" to the problem is premature at best.

Sorry, but you have failed to account for why traffic skyrocketed
after the premiere of DS9, assuming of course that "lack of 
knowledge" is a constant both before and after the premiere.
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