From: dsmith@aa.cad.slb.com (J. Daniel Smith)
Newsgroups: soc.college,news.groups,alt.config
Subject: alt.colleges proposal
Date: 9 Sep 92 02:07:41 GMT
Followup-To: alt.config
Organization: Schlumberger CAD/CAM; Ann Arbor, MI (USA)

For the past few weeks, I've been thinking over the idea that it would
be fun, interesting and useful to have newsgroups devoted to
individual colleges and universities throughout the world.  The
following outlines a few of my thoughts on the matter, and I guess
ultimately constitutes a formal proposal.

This idea surfaced again a few weeks ago when I was looking for a 1992
Michigan State Football schedule.  Since only bad things about MSU get
any press in Ann Arbor (home of the University of Michigan), I posted
an article to "rec.sport.football.college", and had a schedule within
a day.  However, it was necessary to bother all of r.s.f.c for a MSU
football schedule; seems like too broad of an audience.  Similar
things happen in groups like "soc.net-people".

Thus, the idea of having a newsgroup devoted to individual colleges
and universities.  I can imagine a large number of uses for such
newsgroups: meeting fellow alumni, local items of interest, sports,
job postings, etc.

So, where to put these newsgroups?  My initial thought was that they
would fit nicely into the "soc.college" hierarchy (i.e.
soc.college.us.mi.msu), but I think I've decided against that.
   * since "soc" is an official USENET hierarchy, the formal newsgroup
     creation policies must be followed.  This would make it rather
     cumbersome to create new groups for the many colleges and
     universities.
   * "soc.college" seems more oriented to college topics *in general*.
   * its "college", but what I'm proposing is a collection of newgroups
     for colleges.
   * the number of newsgroups will probably soon grow quite large; I'm
     not sure if its appropriate to have them all under "soc.college".
Primarily for the first reason, I think these newsgroups should go
into the "alt" hierarchy with the name "alt.colleges"; new groups can
be created much more freely in the "alt" hierarchy.  I realize that
"easy newsgroup creation" is a poor reason for putting something in
"alt", but holding a formal CFD, CFV, etc. for each new college seems
a bit much (someone correct me if I'm wrong on this).

The first level under "alt.colleges" should be a country name such as
"us" (or "usa"; I'm not sure which one is the official USENET/Internet
abbreviation), "ca" (Canada), "de" (Germany [Deutschland]), etc.  This
is for two reasons:
   * sites can easily filter out all "foreign" colleges and
     universities
   * the US is treated the same as other countries (this wouldn't be
     the case if the "us" was dropped and just the State abbreviations were
     used.)

For "alt.colleges.us", their would be another hierarchy for each
state.  The name at this level is the official USPS state abbreviation
(e.g. "alt.colleges.us.mi" and "alt.colleges.us.ca").
   * eliminate confusion between identical abbreviations for different
     colleges.  For example, in Michigan, CMU usually is taken to mean
     Central Michigan University and not Carnige Mellon.
   * there are a lot of colleges in the US.  Arranging things by state
     helps keep things more manageable.

Finally, the name for the college should be a common abbreviation or
full name.  Existing USENET/Internet names should be used whenever
possible.  For example, since Michigan State University has "msu.edu"
as its domain, the newsgroup would be "alt.colleges.us.mi.msu".  The
University of Michigan would be either "umich" (from umich.edu) or
"uom" (local newsgroups), but probably not "um".  My feeling is to use
the Internet name wherever possible.  Note that whenever a new
newsgroup in the "alt.colleges" hierarchy is created, a messages
should be posted to it once the "newsgroup" message has had time to
make it through the net.  This is because some newsreaders do not
alert the user to a new newsgroup until it has articles in it.

This proposal brings up a few issues: increased traffic, and
cross-postings.  I would expect that traffic in any single newsgroup
would be relatively small (say 10 articles/day), but across several
hundred newsgroups, that is significant volume.  However, I would guess
that most site would choose to expire (or not accept) all but a
handful of these newsgroups rather quickly.  Even at large companies,
there are a fairly small number of colleges represented.  So, I don't
see the increased traffic as being a serious problem.

Cross postings are another matter.  Certain topics, such as sports,
already have their own newsgroups (rec.sport.college.{football,basketball}).
Someone posting something about MSU football, might wish to do so in
both "rec.sport.college.football" and the new
"alt.colleges.us.mi.msu".  While this does increase disk usage, it
might turn out to be highly beneficial for many readers.  Staying with
sports, the rec.sport.college groups carry a lot of traffic.  Many
people my only be interested in their alma-matter, and don't want to
wade through all the "noise" in the rec.sport.college groups.  These
new newsgroups would provide them with an alternative.  I can't think
of any other newsgroups (other than the low-traffic soc.net-people)
that would be prone to similar types of cross-posting.

Finally, for general discussion of the "alt.colleges" hierarchy
(whatever that may be), there should be "alt.colleges.d".

Well, I think that's about it.  I'd be interested in hearing what the
USENET community has to say.  Since this hierarchy will likely be
created in "alt", I've set the followup to "alt.config".

   Dan
-- 
============================================================================
J. Daniel Smith                     Internet: dsmith@aa.cad.slb.com
Schlumberger CAD/CAM                          dsmith@aaaca1.sinet.slb.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA)               UUCP: uunet!sharkey!applga!dsmith