From: jcastner@isis.cs.du.edu (John Castner)
Subject: Re: sci.astro.amateur?
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Keywords: Glad to hear they do! ;-) 
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 92 03:07:43 GMT

In article <schinder.702748086@leprss.gsfc.nasa.gov> schinder@leprss.gsfc.nasa.gov writes:
>In <1250@wtcp.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> dgrimmer@wtcp.DaytonOH.NCR.COM (Dave Grimmer) writes:
>
>>I would be very much in favor of a new group geared towards amateur
>>astronomy.  I get very little from the theoretical discussions and space
>>craft reports (your milage may vary).  Maybe a sci.astro.amateur could
>>fill the need that used to be served by "Telescope Making" and "Deep Sky".
>>The new group would also be a more appropriate place for club newsletters
>>and announcements of club events.
>
>I don't see the need.  sci.astro isn't a particularly large newsgroup
>by USENET standards.  Most people who've complained about the size of
>the group would be better served if they switched newsreaders or
>convinced their site admin to get a better one.  I use nn, and it
>works just fine for selectively reading much larger groups than this.
>Even rn allows selective reading, although not as easily.

Maybe not, but I don't think you'll get many people to change their favorite
newsreader this way.  I would bet that the reason many people complain
about the size of the group is that they are very busy people, who are
able to get to News only once every three days, or even only once a week.
After going so long w/o reading, it's annoying to find ~60 or more unread
messages, find that some have expired, and that a third or more are on
amateur equipment and observing (or your favorite "unimportant" topic).
And for those who feel they aren't getting enough of sci.astro, get one
of the free accounts here on Nyx (nyx.cs.du.edu).  With 1600 newsgroups,
and 20-30 sci.astro posts/day.  (Go ahead and flame this shameful plug. :-)
 
>One of the common fallacies on USENET is "topic X isn't discussed,
>therefore we need a group for topic X". In reality, if topic X isn't
>discussed somewhere, there's no need for a group, as people who manage
>to create such groups soon find out.  If people want to post club
>newsletters and club events, post them here, but use appropriate
>geographic distributions.  If such traffic is large enough and
>persists, *that* is reason to create a new group.  The mere existance
>of a group almost never generates the traffic to fill it; significant
>traffic must already exist (usually, there have been a few exceptions
>in my time on the net) for successful newsgroups to be spun off.

I know of quite a few worldwide-propagated groups with about a fourth
of sci.astro's material.  I don't feel the new groups would have "too
little" material.

>>Does anbody have any idea of how many people subscribe to sci.astro?
>
>According to the latest "arbitron" figures (released monthly in news.lists):
[meaning of these numbers deleted]
>  75  68000  1387   82%   502  1391.8    22%  0.03   3.2%  sci.astro
Care to tell us how this compares with the average newsgroup,
or an average about-to-split group?
--
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|jcastner@nyx.cs.du.edu |Alas, the thirsty freshman/He isn't so anymore       |
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Newsgroups: sci.astro