From: pierre@prpa.philips.com (Pierre Uszynski)
Subject: Re: RFD: Removal of Unused Newsgroups
Organization: Philips Research Palo Alto
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 21:20:34 GMT

In <BtyEpu.2CM@uunet.uu.net> aryeh@cash.ucsc.edu (Aryeh Friedman) writes:

[...]
>	I recently did a line count on my .newsrc and found that there are
>1660 groups in it.  Surely not all of them are needed.  To reduce the number
>in a rational way I put forward the following procedure that should be added
>to the offical set of UseNet Guidelines, maintained by Gene Spaford 
>(spaf@cs.prudue.edu).  I already passed the idea past the readers of 
>news.groups a few weeks ago.  Ok here is the proposed new guideline, in draft
>form:

>	Title: Procedure for removing unused newsgroups (aka Call for Removal
>	       [CFR])

>	Purpose: To allow for the orderly removal of unused newsgroup

ok, fine, so I'll go through some of the previous argument AGAINST this
proposal as a whole.

1) Storage space considerations prompt no need to remove unused
newsgroups. My .newsrc is 2670 lines long (bigger than yours, nyak,
nyak :-) and that does not bother me.  I seriously doubt that the
programs related to the news feed spend much time on unused groups.
Finally empty directories in my news spool area do not take up any
significant space. Somebody calculated space taken on the whole net,
and even that was not worth any effort as rmgroup messages do not free
that space (see point 7 below)

2) I see a reason for NOT trying to remove empty newsgroups: they may
only temporarily emtpy. Then some guys trying to call for removal
forces people to actually do something to defend a potentially useful
group.

3) I see a reason for NOT adding this procedure: this procedure will
generate useless traffic (like this discussion).

4) Who would be looking for unused newsgroups (by definition they are
groups that nobody notices). I suggest there are more useful activities
than tracking *unused* newsgroups!

5) Yes, I'm already spending time following up on this... I hope I
won't have to spend much more.

6) There are probably more "bogus newsgroups" in my news installation,
and in my .newrc, than there are "unused newsgroups"

7) The rmgroup messages are already not implemented by many sysadmins
(including at this site). They are not implemented because we don't
mind the ridiculously low overhead of keeping these newly bogus
newsgroups around.

8) Somebody said removing unused newsgroups would cut on the number of
attempts by newbies who try to get answers from old forgotten
newsgroups. But, the guidelines (from memory :-) mention that they
should monitor the traffic a bit before posting anyway. I personally
don't understand the concept of posting questions to a group with no
traffic :-)

So, anyway, just say NO to this proposal,
Pierre.

PS. besides, calling this CFR by similarity to CFV sound pretty stupid
to me. It would be a call for votes just the same as the current calls
for votes. Just for a different (less meaningfull) type of proposal.
-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
       Pierre Uszynski, Philips Research Palo Alto, CA, USA
            USA-415-354-0328, pierre@PRPA.Philips.COM