From: koreth@hyperion.com (Steven Grimm)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,rec.arts.startrek.current,rec.arts.startrek.misc
Subject: 2nd RFD: rec.arts.startrek.reviews moderated
Followup-To: news.groups
Date: 25 Jan 1993 01:02:04 -0500
Organization: hyperion.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: rodan.uu.net

This is the second REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION for rec.arts.startrek.reviews.
Quick summary of major changes:

- As promised, removed the crossposting proviso from the charter.  The question
  of crossposting is in its own section at the end of the document, and is
  by no means finally decided yet.  The section is long, but it's a very
  important point.  Please read and comment on it -- whether you're for or
  against crossposting.  I need to know what the majority opinion is.
- Defined some things precisely: what a "regular poster" is and what the
  keywords and subject line should look like.
- Expanded the "Problems" section considerably to answer some major points
  of objection raised during the first round of discussion.
- Added a "What r.a.s.r. isn't" section.


Background
----------
With the premiere of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", rec.arts.startrek.current
is seeing a flood of discussion, as one might expect.  It's overwhelming to
some people, especially those who mostly read the group to find out about new
episodes.  Others have already quit rec.arts.startrek.current because the
volume was intolerable even before DS9 started.

So, naturally, talk of splitting the group is circulating.  Some are proposing
a split along show lines (e.g. a rec.arts.startrek.current.ds9), designed to
reduce the traffic in rec.arts.startrek.current or to split it in two.  That
is an option.

Another option, complementing the above, is rec.arts.startrek.reviews.  Two
people immediately offered to moderate it when it was suggested, and at
least a few people have posted in support of the idea.


Proposed charter
----------------
Rec.arts.startrek.reviews is a moderated newsgroup exclusively for reviews
of "Star Trek" episodes, books, comics, and related items (just "episodes"
in the rest of the charter, for brevity).  It is open to all incarnations
of Trek: the original series, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and
any others that pop up in the future.

A "review" is defined as an original (non-followup) article that expresses
and justifies an opinion about a particular episode.  The moderator has the
power to reject articles that aren't appropriate for the group.  Articles
may not be rejected on the basis of the opinions expressed, but might be
rejected for any of the following reasons:

- The article states an opinion ("I hated the episode") without any
  discussion of WHY the poster thinks that, or with so little discussion
  ("because it had awful FX") that it's not useful to others seeking
  insight into the episode.
- The article is very poorly written.  The moderator would be expected to
  be generous here, but has the power to reject completely incoherent
  messages that don't convey any clear opinion.  

Followups will be directed to r.a.s.current or r.a.s.misc, or to other
more appropriate groups in the r.a.s. heirarchy should any appear in the
future.

All reviews will include proper spoiler protection, and will have descriptive
Subject lines containing the name of the episode in question, as well as
standard abbreviations, listed below, identifying the subject of the review.

The moderator has the power (but is not required) to allow regular
reviewers to post directly to the moderated group, provided they agree
to adhere to this charter.  This will help keep the group timely and
reduce the impact of the moderator going on vacation.  A regular reviewer
is anyone who has submitted six consecutive articles to the group without
rejections.  If one of those people posts an article that doesn't belong
in r.a.s.reviews (as determined by the moderator), the moderator may
cancel the article in question.

Subject lines will look like this:

Subject: <show> <type> Review: <title>

Where <show> is one of TOS, TAS, TNG, or DS9, <type> is one of TV, MOVIE,
BOOK, COMIC, MERCHANDISE, or EVENT, and <title> is the title of the article,
which must include the name of the episode.  The moderator may add keywords
to the list as appropriate, for example if another TV series starts or if
another <type> is needed.  Review: may be omitted if it appears in the title
(Subject: TNG TV Clinton's Spoiler Review: "Yesterday's Enterprise Zone").

[end charter]

What r.a.s.r. isn't
-------------------
The primary purpose of rec.arts.startrek.reviews is not to reduce the traffic
in rec.arts.startrek.current.  In fact, some argue that it might increase
such traffic (see the Problems section).  The idea is to provide people who
want to read episode reviews, but don't want to wade through all of r.a.s.c.'s
discussions to do it, an easy way to get to the articles they want.

Reducing or segmenting r.a.s.c.'s traffic is still a desirable goal, and a
goal that's not incompatible with this proposal.

This proposal is also not a reaction to the DS9 premiere, though that sparked
the discussions that caused the proposal to be issued now.  The problem
addressed by r.a.s.r. was there long before DS9 started.

Benefits
--------
A rec.arts.startrek.reviews group has several benefits.  First, obviously,
it separates out the reviews from the discussions, for those who don't care
to read followup articles.  Readers of rec.arts.startrek.reviews will be
assured that reviews posted there will have proper spoiler protection, that
the particular show being reviewed (TNG, DS9, etc.) is mentioned in the
Subject line for easy killing, and that the episode names are spelled
consistently for the same reason.

Small sites which currently can't afford to receive r.a.s.c. might be able
to afford the reviews alone, making them available to a larger number of
readers.

Synopses would presumably still appear in rec.arts.startrek.info, though
naturally a review can include a synopsis section if the reviewer wishes.

Problems
--------
1. The group might increase traffic by encouraging more people to post
   reviews.

That may well be the case.  But encouraging more people to make their voices
heard, and giving them an organized, quiet place to do it, is perfectly in
line with the purpose of the net, and shouldn't be considered a bad thing.

2. You can seek out reviews using killfiles already.

You can certainly kill replies easily enough, leaving you with only original
articles.  A quick look through rec.arts.startrek.current on spud.hyperion.com
brings into question how useful that technique is, though; out of 1243
articles, 278 are non-replies, and 22 of those are reviews.  This is still
less than a 10% hit rate, so auto-selecting non-replies isn't really a
viable option if quickly reading reviews is the objective.

There are also people (at least one) who will continue to read r.a.s.c.
even if r.a.s.r. passes.  Killing all replies would prevent them from
following the r.a.s.c. discussions they did want to read.

Finally, r.a.s.r. allows a site which pays for its newsfeed to receive
reviews and not discussions.  This might enable many smaller sites, which
can't afford to carry r.a.s.c. due to transfer costs or lack of disk space,
to at least carry episode reviews for their users.  Even large sites might
keep r.a.s.r. articles around longer than r.a.s.c. articles for space
reasons.

3. Why now, in the middle of talk about a split?

The timing of this proposal is probably not the world's greatest, it's true.
It was sent out now simply because people were already talking about making
new groups.  And now that the process has started, it may as well be carried
to its conclusion.

4. The group wouldn't do anything to cut down rec.arts.startrek.current's
   traffic.

Correct.  See "What r.a.s.r isn't" above.

5. Discussions would cross group boundaries, making them harder to follow.

In its current form, this is a valid objection.  A possible solution
involves crossposting, but there is still much debate about whether this
is a good idea.  See "Crossposting" below.

6. What about rec.arts.startrek.info?

R.a.s.info's moderator has stated that he believes it is counter to that
group's charter to post reviews there.  Since there is currently no procedure
for changing the charter of a newsgroup, a .reviews group is the way to go
if segregating reviews is desired.

7. What about a mailing list?

Another suggestion, intended as a replacement for .reviews, is a moderated
reviews mailing list.  In fact, the two aren't mutually exclusive.  One can
easily envision r.a.s.reviews' moderator also running a mailing list, so that
people can get reviews even if their sites don't receive netnews at all.
The mailing list can be started immediately, with the group to follow as the
group-creation process continues.  But a mailing list alone is less convenient
than a newsgroup, for these reasons, among others:

- Some people have to pay for mail and not for news.
- News provides very easy, very widely-available ways to kill subjects.  While
  all of this can be done with mail as well, it's a lot harder, and users are
  a lot less likely to find such software already installed and set up at their
  sites.
- News provides automatic short-term archiving, so a user can easily go into
  the newsgroup immediately after watching an episode and see all the reviews
  to date.  With a mailing list, the user must either save reviews that come
  in, or wait for the episode's reviews to show up in digest form.  News does
  not prevent the user from saving reviews if that's desired -- it's as easy
  to save a news article as a mail message.
- Followups (to .current or .misc) are easy from within a newsreader, but
  require much more effort from a mailing list.
- A reviews group would be seen immediately by nearly everyone to whom it was
  available.  A mailing list would only be of use to people who happened to
  see an announcement about it.


Crossposting
------------
As originally written, the proposed charter contained this paragraph:

All reviews will be crossposted to rec.arts.startrek.current or to
rec.arts.startrek.misc, as appropriate, so that readers of those groups
will still enjoy the same reviews they always have.  If further splits
of the rec.arts.startrek heirarchy occur, reviews will be crossposted to
the appropriate new group (e.g. rec.arts.startrek.tng, if such a group
were to be created.)

Note that this proviso is about crossposting, the simultaneous transmission
of an article over multiple newsgroups.  It does not propose reposting,
which would mean sending the article out separately over each of several
groups.

This proviso was easily the hottest point of contention in the first
round of discussion.  The biggest concerns were that crossposting would
cause the group to increase r.a.s.c.'s traffic (because more people would
post and reply to reviews) and that crossposting would cost extra money
to people who have to pay for their newsfeeds.

Before those concerns are addressed, the reasons behind the crossposting
proviso should be stated.

1. If reviews aren't crossposted and a site chooses not to receive
   rec.arts.startrek.reviews, that site won't get the reviews at all.
   Crossposted articles are transmitted if any of the groups occur
   in the list of groups a site is getting.

2. Likewise, even if a site receives the new group, people who choose
   not to subscribe to it, or whose newsreaders don't automatically
   inform them of new groups, so they don't notice when the group appears,
   will not see the reviews if they only appear in r.a.s.r.

3. For users of many kinds of newsreading software, it's very convenient
   to confine an entire discussion thread to a single group.  Without
   crossposting, the start of a thread would appear in r.a.s.r. and the
   rest of the thread would be in r.a.s.c. (or another group).  With
   crossposting, the user need only go to r.a.s.c. to see the review and
   all its followups, but can still go to r.a.s.r. to more quickly find
   the review if the followups aren't of interest.

4. Since the group isn't intended as a traffic reduction tool for r.a.s.c.,
   it should impact existing groups as little as possible to allow other
   split proposals to proceed unaffected.

Now, the concerns.  It's true that r.a.s.r. might have the effect of
increasing r.a.s.c's traffic.  The question is, will it add "junk" traffic
to r.a.s.c.?  The added traffic will generally be the reviews themselves
(which one might reasonably expect to increase in number after r.a.s.r.'s
creation) and the discussions stemming from those reviews.  Both of these
seem completely within the bounds of r.a.s.c.'s charter, and indeed might
be positive contributions to the group from the points of view of people
who _do_ have the time and inclination to read all the reviews and
followups there.

Another point is that attempting to slow down r.a.s.c.'s growth by blocking
crossposting on r.a.s.r. is likely to provide short-term relief only, and
minimal relief at that.  Historically, Usenet's traffic has roughly doubled
each year, a trend that shows no signs of slowing.  The traffic problem in
r.a.s.c. is not going to be solved by eliminating r.a.s.r.'s crossposting.
Other solutions will be necessary to lessen the flow of articles in r.a.s.c.
To use the sample numbers cited in the Problems section (22 reviews out of
1243 articles in r.a.s.c.), the number of reviews could quadruple under
r.a.s.r. and that increase would be less than 6% of r.a.s.c.'s current
article volume, or about a month's natural growth of the group.

The second concern is that crossposting will cost some users money, since
they will be forced to download and/or store articles twice.  Such people
are a minority on the net; the vast majority of news transport software
(B-news, INN, and most everything in between) transmits crossposted articles
once and stores them once, and most news-reading software will only show
them to the user once.  The point was made that even on new systems, at
least a little space is used to store a crosspost.  That is true, but much
of the space (the directory entry) is, under UNIX, allocated once and never
freed for the life of the directory, so a crosspost is likely to simply fill
a slot left over from the latest expire of r.a.s.c. or r.a.s.m.

People who are using unusual software might well pay for an article twice.
On the other hand, it could just as easily cost some people more if reviews
_aren't_ crossposted; for instance, if users at a site want to see reviews
and discussions about TOS books and comics, the site will get r.a.s.misc.
Without crossposting, it'd also have to get r.a.s.reviews, with all its TNG
and DS9 reviews (which, granted, can be killed easily -- but the site has
still paid for them.)

Finally, a user of software that doesn't handle crossposting well who's
interested in reading the r.a.s.c. discussions can, if the crossposting
proviso is adopted, simply not get r.a.s.r.  Presumably this will be
acceptable, since the reviews will still be transmitted in the r.a.s.c.
feed.  But again, these users are a tiny part of the Usenet community;
most readers are on systems that handle crossposting well.

The crossposting proviso is, in the opinion of the author, a sound and
desirable part of the charter and should be reinstated.

Please post comments and discussion to news.groups.

-Steve
Xref: sparky news.announce.newgroups:1550 news.groups:26205