From: hades@coos.dartmouth.edu (Brian Hughes)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: 2nd RFD: rec.arts.startrek.reviews moderated
Date: 26 Jan 93 19:45:21 GMT
Reply-To: hades@Dartmouth.Edu
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Disclaimer: Personally, I really don't care who you think I speak for.
Moderator: Rec.Arts.Comics.Info

cstone@husc8.harvard.edu (christopher stone) writes:

>In article <1jvvosINNeq3@rodan.UU.NET> koreth@hyperion.com (Steven
Grimm) writes:

>>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.

>Just one suggestion: if there is currently no procedure for changing
>a group's charter, why not make one up?  If there's nothing in the
>rules expressely forbidding it, then why couldn't we just have a cfv
>on changing info's charter?  It might be a lot simpler than formally
>creating a new newsgroup, plus people might just find it simpler to have
>one moderated startrek newsgroup?

    This is a possibility, but I would like to point out that unless you
can get Jim Griffith to agree to any changes you would like to make to
the charter, all of the voting in the world can not stop him from
posting only those articles that he feels should be posted to the group.
He is the moderator and that is his job.
    As for the number of moderated groups, I just don't see 2 being a
bigger problem than 1. I can see how adding more discussion groups could
be a problem for some people, but moderated group are low traffic in
nature, and even a primative news reader could scan an additional on
with little to no extra effort.

>>Crossposting
>>------------

>I would be in favor of crossposting, since it would provide a base
>reference for followup discussions in .current or wherever.  Some people
>say that we ought not to create newsgroup that is duplicated in its
>entirety on another newsgroup, but I say, why not create a precedent
>here if it is in out interest to do so?

    Well, actually there already is a precedent. It's called
news.announce.newgroups. And although I was one of the first people
opposed to this idea, I have changed my mind, and think that the cross
posting is a very good idea for being able to follow only one of the
groups, .current or .reviews. Also, having a moderator set the subject
line of all reviews that would be posted will go a long way to cleaning
up the general subject line problem in rec.arts.startrek.*.

>Yes.  Encouraging more people to write reviews is a good thing.

    I tend to agree here, but remember that more traffic is not
necessarily a good thing.

>Yes, I agree.  I think that while r.a.s.reviews is a worthwhile proposal,
>the biggest problem with the r.a.s. groups is that .current is just too
>big.  We will have to find a way of reducing traffic there, probably
>by splitting it.  I have been in favor or a ds9/tng style split, and
>there have been other proposals as well.

    The single biggest problem with rec.arts.startrek.* is that people
have no idea where a particular article should be posted. This is the
reason that .current is so big.

>Now, here's the point: I will vote for the creation of .reviews *if*
>people generally agree to get serious about splitting .current in some
>way after the .reviews group is created.  Above it was noted that .reviews
>does not attempt to address the problem of .current, and this is fine by
>me --  BUT, I can easily envision an rfd for splitting .current in a few
>weeks time in which the main objection is, "Hey!  We just created a new
>startrek newsgroup, .reviews.  Just how many newsgroups do we need?"

    Did you see the report that someone did that tallied the stats of
the article subjects in .current? It clearly showed that .current should
be about 60% - 75% smaller than it currently is. All of the rest of
the traffic should have been posted to one of the other ras.* groups,
and about >50% of .current's traffic should have been posted to .misc.
This is where the problem is, and splitting .current isn't going to make
this any better. Until people realize where their posts are supposed to
go it won't matter how many groups Star Trek has.

>Indeed, when someone first pointed out that proposals to create .reviews
>and to split .current into ds9 and tng branches were *not* mutually
>exclusive, and I posted in support of this idea, the reaction of 
>many people was just that -- "How many groups does Trek need?"

    The groups that we have now (with the probable addition of .reviews)
really is all that is needed for Star Trek.

>I say it needs however many as it needs.  As the .reviews proposal
>stands, I like it, but only if people really adhere to the bit
>about it *not* being a substitute for splitting .reviews.  I will
>look at the reaction to this 2nd rfd and this post, and if people
>seem to realize that the two proposals are *not* mutually exclusive
>and seem to indicate that they are serious about discussing ways to
>split .current, then I'll vote for it.  If I get reactions like the
>ones discussed above, then I won't, since I believe the most urgent
>problem we must deal with is the volume of traffic in .current.

    Again, the reason for the traffic volume in .current is the fact
that people have no idea where their posts should go. There is no reason
that .current should be bigger than all of the other Star Trek
discussion groups combined. The most urgent problem in .current is
the lack of knowledge possed by it's posters, and until this is dealt
with any other "solution" to the problem is premature at best.

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