From: berninge@cs.purdue.edu (James Berninger)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Soc.Motss.*
Date: 16 Dec 1992 22:44:43 -0500
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University
NNTP-Posting-Host: alice.cs.purdue.edu

ra@asuvax.eas.asu.edu (Starcap'n Ra) writes:
>berninge@cs.purdue.edu (James Berninger) writes:
>>I'd also like to see "soc.motss.travel", to localize those "anyone
>>know what/who to do in xxx", etc.
>"Localize" those "anyone" messages.  Why, pray tell?
>What purpose would that serve?  If everyone is to read
>them, why should they have to bother going to another
>newgroup?...
Following similar logic, why not post "Anyone want to buy this thing
I'm selling" to *every* newsgroup?  It's the only way to reach
everyone (with Net access) who might be interested.  Soc.motss.travel
would be a clear distinction from the rest of the newsgroup, and
judging from the content of the messages I've read recently, it
would get a fair amount of traffic (no pun intended).

>> I'm glad to see that there's a lot of discussion about splitting
>> soc.motss -- it's almost gotten too big for its own good, IMHO.
>I think splitting motss would be a big mistake....
>...to split a group as though one were tidying up
>a messy desk and making nice little compartments for
>every conceivable item is bad.  Instead of having to
>wade through one large group every day, you'll end up
>having to wade through several with all sorts of
>useless crossposts between them.
I've already mentioned (in several previous articles) that I think
soc.motss would benefit from being split.  In particular, the volume
alone has turned off a lot of people -- people who have Net access,
and who would enjoy this group, but don't read it because they have
better things to do than page through 200+ articles every day.  Not
enough of the articles in soc.motss have the same subject, and not
enough posters use the "keywords" line, so KILL files become almost
as time-consuming as reading all of the articles anyway.  True,
those of us who read nearly every article anyway would be reading
every article in all of the various subgroups, but those of us who
read only the articles that interest us and KILL the remaining 95%
would greatly benefit from separate groups.

A fair amount of the volume of this group is taken up by people
flaming each other -- and I use the word "flame" in the
argumentative sense as well as the queeny sense -- to the point that
the topic is not really motss-relevent anymore.  When the only
motss-relevence of a certain thread happens to be that the poster(s)
is homosexual, that's when the thread has lost my interest (if it
hasn't already).  How many postings have gone into my KILL file
because they said little more then "This guy I saw on TV is *SO*
hot!", only to be followed up by others who edit the subject line...
And arguments (especially those between two people) belong more in
alt.flame or e-mail, rather than wasting bandwidth for those who
stopped following the thread long ago.

And while I'm griping about tentative soc.motss subgroups, how about
one for HIV/AIDS discussion and memorials?  Some of us don't know
who this "Rob Bernardo" person was, and, no offense, don't care.  I
nearly doubled the size of my KILL file within two days after he
died because of various people posting the "news" (all under
different subject lines), or giving their own testimonials.
Personally, I'd like to see a group like talk.aids.support for this,
since I'd really rather not see HIV or AIDS associated with the gay
community any more than absolutely necessary -- especially with the
lack of AIDS education that the USA still has (96% of high school
students in a neighboring county still believe that AIDS is a purely
homosexual/IV drug disease).  For those of us who have already
learned that AIDS is not just a gay disease, the issue of AIDS alone
has lost motss-relevence.

Standard disclaimers apply...

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