From: cstone@husc8.harvard.edu (christopher stone)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: This latest r.a.s.* split
Date: 21 Jan 93 16:57:53 GMT
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

In article <1993Jan19.171607.7668@cbfsb.cb.att.com> forbes@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (Scott Forbes) writes:
>+-- griffith@fx.com writes:
>| 
>| Ya know, just when you thought you'd get a little peace and quiet,
>| yet another of these proposals comes down the pike.
>
>:-)  The more things change, the more we change things.
>
>
>| 1) Would at least 20% of the subjects raised in either a TNG or a DS9
>|    group warrant cross-posting to both groups?
>
>Hmmm....   What percentage of r.a.s.* readers think about whether the
>article they're posting would "warrant cross-posting" to another group?
>Compare this to the number of readers who simply post to the group that
>they're reading at the time.  How would groups named "r.a.s.tng" and
>"r.a.s.ds9" operate under these conditions?
>
>There would be more crossposting, but there would be fewer articles that
>appear in the wrong group entirely.  This is IMHO a Good Thing.

Yes, this is an important distinction to make.

>|   Considering the frequency of TNG stars appearing in DS9, plus the
>|   fact that the two shows take place in the same universe in the
>|   same time frame, the answer here is clearly "yes".  With that much
>|   crossover, partitioning the group doesn't make much sense.
>
>"Crossover" does not always imply "crossposting".  Patrick Stewart's
>appearance in the premiere of DS9 would not have created many articles
>in a r.a.s.tng newsgroup, nor would have L'ursa and B'etor's scenes in
>DS9's "Past Prologue".  The two-part episode that begins on TNG and
>ends on DS9 is the only severe problem I see with this partition, and
>we can only speculate on how often that will occur.

Yes, it really isn't fair to label "PP" a crossover with tng.  That would
really be stretching it.  I also argue that there won't be many
full-fleged crossovers like the Worf one coming up.

>
>
>|2) Does intelligent use of a news reader address most of the complaints
>|   raised by those pushing for a separate newsgroup?
>
>This assumption is popular among users of the 'nn' software, and among
>people who spend more than 25% of their spare time reading netnews.
>
>I'm sorry, but it doesn't hold water outside of those two populations.
>If this were a valid solution for r.a.s.current's volume problem, then:
>
>  (a)  The problem wouldn't exist in the first place.  People would be
>       using the features of their newsreader to filter out articles
>       on uninteresting subjects, and there would be no complaints about
>       excessive volume on r.a.s.current.  This is obviously false.

Point well taken.

>
>  (b)  The problem would be trivial to solve.  Blanket "not-my-problem"
>       disclaimers, such as
>
>|                       If you are unwilling to spend fifteen minutes
>|   to read a man page and figure out how to *intelligently* use a
>|   news reader, I have no sympathy for you.
>
>       conveniently ignore the problem of educating 100,000 users about
>       feature(s) that may or may not be available, or that may vary in
>       implementation from newsreader to newsreader to site to site.
>       (The alternate solution of *replacing* all those newsreaders,
>       mentioned here for the benefit of one reader, is also unworkable
>       for much the same reasons:  Too much effort required, and no sign
>       of a volunteer [army] willing to die for the cause.)
>
>If and when you *are* willing to hand-hold each and every user through
>the learning process, then you can seriously suggest "better educated
>user base" as a solution to all the net's problems.  Until then....

Preicisely; we must remember that different segments of readership have
different requirements.  It would be nice to get every single poster
to label posts with a DS9 or TNG prefix, for example, but realistically
it's not going to happen, and a major portion of posts lacking said
prefix will invalidate the whole point of having prefixes.  THere
will be some people who incorrectly post to a tng group when they
should post to a ds9 group; I don't deny that.  No classification scheme
is perfect.  But I think the percentage who would do so is far smaller
than the number who would neglect to put a TNG or DS9 prefix
in their posts should be decided not to split r.a.s.c.

>
>|3) Is the TNG viewership significantly diverse from the DS9 viewership
>|   that a significant number of people would read a news group looking
>|   for stuff on TNG but *not* looking for DS9 stuff?  Or vice versa?
>
>For the moment we'll ignore all readers outside the United States, since
>the answer is an immediate "yes" otherwise....
>
>Another trivial refutation would be the readership of r.a.s.info.  Is
>there any significant diversity between the readership of r.a.s.info
>and the readership of r.a.s.current, assuming (as above) that volume
>and signal-to-noise ratio have no effect on the readership?  :-)
>
>
>|4) Isn't this the exact same discussion that came up over TOS and TNG
>|   when TNG first started?
>|
>|   Yes it is.  And we have one set of groups.  Get a clue from that.
>                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Note that we had one (1) discussion group when TNG first started.
>
>
>|   Again, a few pedantics will jump forward and say "but TOS wasn't
>|   running at the same time as TNG!".  True.  But 1) there was always
>|   a TOS film in the works at the same time as TNG was being shown,
>|   and 2) in a year (two at the most), TNG will be in the same boat as
>|   TOS, at which time the TNG groups would vanish in a blaze of
>|   inactivity if a split was made.  Creating groups with a planned
>|   destruction date has always been frowned on.
>
>This is one of the few points that I tend to agree with strongly:
>Creating rec.arts.startrek.CURRENT.tng (or r.a.s.tng.current) is a
>bad idea that I'll be voting against.  A more useful idea would be an
>unrestricted r.a.s.tng group (which we seem to have anyway, judging
>from the number of misposted articles in r.a.s.current) that will
>continue to be useful after TNG stops being a "current" topic.

OK, but the same objection also applies to reviews: eventually both
ds9 and tng will go off the air, perhaps ten years from now, and
you'll still get a defunct newsgroup.