HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: hooverb@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Bruce Hoover,Armstrong)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RFD: rec.games.abstract
Date: 28 Aug 92 16:28:04 GMT
Originator: hooverb@a.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu

From article <1992Aug28.125418.24312@sbcs.sunysb.edu>, by neilb@scs.leeds.ac.uk (Neil Bowers):
> In article <1992Aug27.185304.14443@riacs.edu> nicholso@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Melvin H. Nicholson YBH) writes:
>>>
 
>>Furthermore, I have an objection to the vague title of the board.
 
> One of the aims of an RFD is to provoke discussion on the group's name.
> The trouble is that there doesn't appear to be a short snappy word
> which summarises the subject of the group.  If someone can come up with
> a better name, great.  If not, then rec.games.abstract will stand.
> It seems acceptable to quite a few people though.


Hey, I have a really good idea...


Howabout rec.games.board.not.war !!!

That would seem to reflect the spirit behind most of the people who are
currently unhappy with rec.games.board.

Bruce Hoover
From: gberigan@cse.unl.edu (Life...)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RFD: Removal of Unused Newsgroups
Date: 2 Sep 92 19:20:04 GMT
Organization: Megadodo Publications, Light City, Ursa Minor Beta

paigen@tfs.com (David Paigen) writes:
>aryeh@cash.ucsc.edu (Aryeh Friedman) writes:

>>                The Need for a Call for Removal (CFR)
>>                        Procedure for UseNet:
>>               Formal Proposal for New UseNet Guideline

>I agree.  Our active file is over 1900 lines now, and 25% of those
>groups are alt.groups.  A brief glance would imply that maybe a
>quarter of these are 'joke' groups, like
>	alt.american.automobile.breakdown.breakdown.breakdown
>and
>	alt.business.multi-level.scam.scam.scam.
>
>I would love to get rid of these.  They just waste space.  No
>traffic (here, at least).

Well it is perfectly fine for any given administrator to decide to
remove a group locally, in effect, choosing not to carry the group.  And
this new procedure I believe will have no bearing on the alt groups.  In
alt, anarchy is the rule. :-)

>David Paigen            and damn'd be he        N: PLO Bush IRA CIA KKK
>paigen@tfs.com          'hold, enough!'"        A: assasination maim

-- gberigan@cse.unl.edu (Life...)

///   ____   \\\  "Sorry, did I say something wrong?  Pardon me for
| |/ /    \ \| |   breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't even 
 \\_|\____/|_//    know why I bother to say it oh God I'm so depressed.
     \_)\\/        Here's another one of those self-satisfied doors.
       `-'         Life... don't talk to me about life...."
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: alok@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (alok.vijayvargia)
Subject: Re:  soc.culture.indian.american and soc.culture.tamil
Organization: AT&T
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 20:11:19 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.190622.18639@resonex.com>, michael@resonex.com (Michael Bryan) writes:
> In article <1992Aug27.203229.21915@cbnewsi.cb.att.com> alok@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (alok.vijayvargia) writes:
> 
> Net.Somebody.AI:
>    You were vote taker at the time, and posted some messages asking for
>    votes, the contents of which went against the spirit of the Usenet

What's so damn wrong in reminding people to cast their votes and hope 
them to vote favorably ?

It is natural to go over this issue again now that net folks are tolerating
campaigning for soc.culture.tamil. In soc.culture.tamil campaign people
were asked to vote YES or abstain. This is worse than my expression of hope
that they would cast favorably for soc.culture.indian.american.

In case of soc.culture.tamil we have people like K. Srinivasan (One of the
organizers of the group along with the vote taker), Prem Kumar , Aruna
Venkatachalam, Mr. Bazyar etc. doing the campaigning during the vote.
Some of the campaigners asked people on email nets to vote YES or
abstain. There is evidence that this line of campaiging was shared
by the vote taker as well. NOw just because I can not get access to 
his phone calls and emails to fellow organizers, does not mean that 
he did not do it. His writings on the net indicate that he too was 
involved in this. If this whole process is not against the net spirit, I have 
to question this damned spirit of the net. 

If a revote is requird in one instance of such spirit, a revote should
be required in another too. THe vote taker should be a neutral vote taker,
not any of the organizers involved in this type of campaigning.

> -- 
> Michael Bryan        michael@resonex.com                     |     ,_,

Alok
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: lazlo@triton.unm.edu (Lazlo Nibble)
Subject: Re: RFD: rec.music.makers.* groups
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 92 19:48:33 GMT
Organization: Sporadic and incomplete

As an aside to this RFD, I'd like to suggest that it might be time to move
rec.music.makers.* up to rec.musicians.*, with appropriate name changes for
any existing or proposed subgroups.  This would shorten the names some --
a definite consideration when we're talking about groups with names like
rec.music.makers.guitar.tabulature.

--
Lazlo (lazlo@triton.unm.edu)

"It's a party item, much like the TITANIC was."
Xref: sparky news.groups:17345 misc.legal:16739
From: tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll)
Newsgroups: news.groups,misc.legal
Subject: Re: RFD: misc.legal.family moderated
Date: 31 Aug 92 17:31:10 GMT
Reply-To: tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Terry Carroll)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation

Bob,

I'd support the proffered newsgroup if for no other reson than to help clean 
up misc.legal.

On the other hand perhaps it does not go far enough.  Should misc.legal and 
misc.legal.computing be reorganized into a misc.legal.______ family?

 -tc

Terry Carroll - tjc50@juts.ccc.amdahl.com - 408/992-2152
The opinions presented above are not necessarily those of a sound mind.
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RFD: Removal of Unused Newsgroups
Date: 2 Sep 92 14:33:25 GMT
Organization: Northern Illinois University

In article <BtyEpu.2CM@uunet.uu.net> aryeh@cash.ucsc.edu (Aryeh Friedman) writes:
>
>	Purpose: To allow for the orderly removal of unused newsgroup

I agree that there is a need to remove newsgroups.  But I don't see
the "unused newsgroup" as the problem.  If a group is completely
unused, ways have already been found.  Lightly used newsgroups do
not seem to me to be the real problem.

The problem newsgroups are:

	Those which do not meet their charter,

	those with a poor signal to noise ratio,

	those whose contents largely duplicate an existing group.

Examples:

    comp.compression was created to discuss compression theory.
	In practice, many of the postings were "where do I find compress",
	or "what is the latest version of ZIP".  These sorts of questions
	are better asked in comp.unix.questions or in the appropriate
	comp.sys or comp.os group.  In this case a alternative
	'comp.compression.research' was created in the hope of meeting
	the original charter.  But comp.compression is still sitting
	there.  The posting rate on comp.compression.research has been
	low, and my impression is that much of it is not according to
	charter either.

    sci.cognitive was started to discuss cognitive science/cognition etc.
	However experience shows that most of the discussion of cognition
	remains on comp.ai.philosophy, raising the question of whether
	sci.cognitive is really needed.

    On many system-specific groups (comp.sys.sun.*, comp.sys.next.*,
	etc, a significant portion of the discussions seem almost
	indistinguishable from comp.unix.questions, and often are
	discussing a topic that was just dealt with on comp.unix.questions.

I doubt that you could get sufficient support for removing the groups
I have named.  What I think we really need is a second vote.  That is,
after a new group has been in place for perhaps 6 months, there should
be a second vote on whether it deserves to remain (has met its charter,
for example).  If it fails to meet the normal CFV guidelines, the group
would be removed.

The signal to noise ratio is a more difficult problem.  As the network
continues to grow, it will only worsen.  The problem is most exasperating
when a discussion continues strongly a month or more after all of the
issues have been thoroughly aired.  Perhaps some groups will eventually
need an ex-post-facto moderator who can announce a topic dead, and after
two days (to allow time for people to set up private mailing lists)
construct a cancel daemon on that subject line and on other subject
lines created in an attempt to subvert the cancel daemon.
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: nicholso@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Melvin H. Nicholson YBH)
Subject: Re: RFD: rec.games.abstract
Keywords: perfect-information deterministic strategic no-dice
Organization: NASA Ames Res. Ctr. Mtn Vw CA 94035
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 18:53:04 GMT

>This is a Request For Discussion on the creation of a newsgroup for
>abstract strategy and tactical games.
[lots deleted]
>
>Example Games
>-------------
>
>This list is not intended to be exhaustive.  Is there a game here *you* hadn't
>heard of previously?
>
>	Alquerque, Black Box, Chameleon, Chase, Checkers, Chess-type
>	games (eg Shogi, Xiangqi, Shaturanga, Shatranj), Chinese
>	Rebels, Complica, Connect Four, Emergo, Fanorona, Fighting
>	Serpents, Footsteps, Go-Moku (Renju), Golomb's Game, Halma,
>	Havannah, Hex, Hexplode, L-Game, Lasca, Lines of Action,
                                         ^^^^^

Do you mean Emmanuel Lasker's game Laska?

>	Mancala (Awari), Master Mind, Nine Men's Morris, Nomic, Qubic
>	(4x4x4 Tic-Tac-Toe), Queen's Guard, Reversi (Othello), Ringo,
>	Run, Salta, Skirrid, Tafl (eg Tablut, Fox & Geese), Teeko

Without exception, the entire charter of this group governs a subset of
the material for rec.games.board.  The group r.g.b has a reletively low
bandwidth, and has often discussed games on the above list --- never
with complaint from the group as a whole.  I fear that any such group as
rec.games.abstract will detract from r.g.b, and for that reason alone my
vote would be against r.g.a

Furthermore, I have an objection to the vague title of the board.
Civilization is an abstract game, but it certainly does not seem to be
the sort of thing you are looking for --- the same goes for Diplomacy,
et al.  I fear that not only will r.g.a be a waste of net resources,
it will actually be a detriment to present groups.

Mel Nicholson
From: neilb@scs.leeds.ac.uk (Neil Bowers)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RFD: rec.games.abstract
Keywords: perfect-information deterministic strategic no-dice
Date: 30 Aug 92 14:30:57 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: The University of Leeds, School of Computer Studies

In article <17las7INNoe5@stanley.cis.Brown.EDU> plutchak@pilsner.geo.brown.edu (Joe Six-pack) writes:
>   The name doesn't strike me as intuitive, even after reading the
>whole article.

The first name I came up with was rec.games.strategy, but several people
thought it might be interpreted as a place to discuss general gaming
strategies, rather than strategy games.  rec.games.strategic was proposed,
but it became obvious that rather a lot of games are considered strategic
by their devotees.

The games covered in r.g.a as proposed include (almost always) no element
of chance, so names based on this could be:
	rec.games.no-{dice,luck,chance}
	rec.games.deterministic
	rec.games.nonstochastic
The first group of names don't really characterise those in the charter,
and the last two are arguably less intuitive that rec.games.abstract :-)

The games we're interested in are (again, almost always) games of perfect
information, so why not rec.games.perfect-information?  Well first off,
this is too long, and would have to be rec.games.perfect-info.
It also doesn't accurately cover the range of games, and is arguably
no better than abstract in intuitiveness.  `Abstract Games' would mean
more to more people than `Perfect Information Games', IMHO.
`Perfect Information' sounds like it could be some yuppy trivia game ;-)

Other names which have been suggested include:

	rec.games.think-sport
	rec.games.pure-strategy
	rec.games.zero-sum

But all these games are `abstract', in that they are not (usually) direct
representations of anything.  It could be claimed that all games are
abstract, and to a degree, they are.  But games like Diplomacy and Squad
Leader are definitely less abstract than, for example, Nomic or Skirrid.

There doesn't seem to be a perfect name for this group, since there isn't
a snappy word for these games in general use.  rec.games.abstract seems
the best (so far). If this causes some confusion, then this will be solved
with a more precisely worded charter, a regular posting in the group itself,
and a mention in FAQs of pertinent groups.

-neilb
Xref: sparky news.groups:17227 alt.sex.stories:1620
From: adam@sw.stratus.com (Mark Adam)
Newsgroups: news.groups,alt.sex.stories
Subject: Re: The call for a new moderator of rec.arts.erotica
Date: 27 Aug 92 21:20:12 GMT
Followup-To: news.groups
Organization: Stratus Computer, Inc.

In article <2A986E56.6C39@telly.on.ca>, evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
> I am in the process of transfering moderation of rec.arts.erotica to
> someone else. That person has already been chosen, and the transfer of
> information has already started between us.

so... you selected this person? oh goodie. not to flog a dead horse; but... gee,
if there were only a mechanism...

> This is not a formal announcement of the changeover. That will come when
> both the new moderator and I have completed the changeover, and are
> ready to announce it.

i'm very happy your world is complete.

-- 

mark ----------------------------
(adam@paix.sw.stratus.com)
		"Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad."
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: nick@sunburn.waterloo.edu (Nick Fitzpatrick)
Subject: Re: RFD: rec.arts.sf.babylon5
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 15:03:16 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.140420.10166@news.iastate.edu> techy@iastate.edu (Troy A Rutter) writes:
>This is a request for discussion on the creation of a new newgroup,
>rec.arts.sf.babylon5.
>
>Babylon 5 is a new Science Fiction television show which will be produced
>by Warner Brothers and, tentatively, airing this fall.  Although for
>a while the only posts will be my bi-weekly and/or monthly FAQ: WHAT IS
>BABYLON 5, once the sreies gets started, IU am fairly positive that demand
>will be there for the new group.
>
Good lord, there are enough posts right now in rec.arts.startrek.current on
B5 for it to justify it's own newsgroup right now!

>Rec.arts.sf.babylon5 shall be unmoderated, but as I said i will be making 
>the monthly FAQ on what B5 is.
>
But, why not rec.arts.babylon5, as this would match the heirarchy 
presently used by two other SF shows (rec.arts.drwho, and rec.arts.startrek.*)

Nicholas Fitzpatrick

Newsgroups: news.groups
From: pierre@prpa.philips.com (Pierre Uszynski)
Subject: Re: RFD: Removal of Unused Newsgroups (what's the point?)
Organization: Philips Research Palo Alto
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 18:27:21 GMT


I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS: all the early feedback is on what the ARITHMETIC
should be to decide that a group must be rmgrouped, and none on the
PROBLEM itself:

1) whether there actually is a PROBLEM with unused groups,
2) on what the PROBLEM actually is,
3) on whether this proposal actually solves any PROBLEM.

(and see my previous post. I think this proposal does not solve any
PROBLEM)

Before discussing how to do it, how about THINKING a bit on whether
there is ANYTHING WORTH DOING?

The closest I see to a reasoning is: "Well geee, my .newsrc is too
long, so yes, this is Waste, so we must rmgroup a bit, yes, I see". But
does the size of your .newsrc really matter that much to anybody? And
if it does, isn't the answer to use a news reader that allows you to
prune your own .newsrc. Instead you try to address a problem of size of
.newsrc by adding even more overhead to news reading (in addition to
votes for new groups and reorganisations, we would have to keep track
of votes to remove...). Besides as I said before, this proposal does
not solve any problem.

Now Neil Rickert rose the question of signal-noise ratio. And that I
could see improved, although I don't know that removing groups would
help. I think signal-noise problems may be mostly a problem of newbies
asking questions before monitoring the appropriate groups long enough.
(I guess I may start a separate thread in this direction. If you follow
up on me about this, please change the title to "Improving
signal-noise")

Pierre.
-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
       Pierre Uszynski, Philips Research Palo Alto, CA, USA
            USA-415-354-0328, pierre@PRPA.Philips.COM
Lines: 10
Date: Wed,  2 Sep 92 11:48:30 MDT
From: gritton@alaska.et.byu.edu (Jamie Gritton)
Organization: Brigham Young University, Provo UT USA
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RFD: comp.org.lpf.news moderated, comp.org.lpf.talk
Reply-To: gritton@byu.edu

awatson@pecan.cns.udel.edu (angela watson) writes:

> 	Oh great!!! Now all the smaller groups are going to be wiped out
> by the news.groupies during Summer and Winter breaks...  as if they
> won't be recreated a few months later.

Um, did you perhaps mean to respond to the "Call For Removal" article?
I don't quite see the connection to comp.org.lpf.* here.
--
James Gritton - gritton@byu.edu - I disclaim
From: rsk@aspen.circ.upenn.edu (Rich Kulawiec)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RFD: rec.music.makers.* groups
Date: 28 Aug 92 20:45:25 GMT
Organization: Cardiothoracic Imaging Research Center

In article <1992Aug28.185740.28330@leland.Stanford.EDU> whale@leland.Stanford.EDU (Stephen Schmidt) writes:
>This question was raised when alt.guitar.bass was formed. The answer
>is that upright bass, which is about half the players reading the newsgroup,
>is in no way descended from guitar [...]

Alright, I'll buy that, and modify the proposal accordingly.  I was
unaware of the larger contingent of upright bass players -- my error.
(This also slightly decreases the extent of the long-names problem;
see below.)

>Is there a good reason that these have to go under rec.music.makers?
>I presume there is, but I think that that's the part of the names that
>people are seeing as excessive length.

Yes, I do think there is a good reason for putting these under
rec.music.makers, to wit: grouping together those groups that are
concerned with instrumental music-making under one heading that
makes it clear (by virtue of its name).   This solves two problems:
first, it brings all the groups together in one convenient place;
second, it avoids -- to some extent -- possible misinterpretations
of the names.  (E.g. "rec.music.guitar" might be construed to be
about music featuring the guitar, rather than guitar technique, equipment,
and so on.)
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)
Subject: Re: Impropriety in soc.culture.tamil vote
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 15:59:27 GMT
Organization: TC Telemanagement, Clearwater, FL

According to alok@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (alok.vijayvargia):
>Asking me to send 600 people emails asking them whether they really voted 
>YES is trying to make it difficult for me to check the validity of the vote.

He isn't trying to make it difficult; it just _is_ difficult.  Quit
being a crybaby and do what you feel you have to do.  If it's too hard
for you -- well, that's just too bad, isn't it?
-- 
Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT  <chip@tct.com>, <73717.366@compuserve.com>
   "Do Rush place weird subliminal backmasked messages in their songs to
 compel unwilling geeks to commit evil .sig atrocities?"  -- Dean Engelhardt
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: u8653100@keystone.arch.unsw.edu.au (Dennis Lu)
Subject: request for a new architecture newsgroup!
Reply-To: u8653100@keystone.arch.unsw.edu.au
Organization: Faculty of Architecture, University of New South Wales
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 01:46:05 GMT

I am from the school of architecture, University of New South Wales, Sydeny, Australia.
Me and my friends here would like to set up a new architectural news group, but we have 
no idea on how to do this.  Could anyone sent me information on that?

Thanks!

Dennis Lu
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Hmmm
From: a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com (Arthur Rubin)
Date: 27 Aug 92 22:36:34 GMT

In <1992Aug27.220119.9883@news.iastate.edu> techy@iastate.edu (Troy A Rutter) writes:


>I sent a message (supposably) to news.groups, news.announce.newgroups,
>rec.arts.sf.misc and rec.arts.sf.startrek.current on a RFD for a new group..
>I did this around noon here... and the message still has not appeared anywhere..
>Ususally the messages i post are there in a few minutes.. any help?

news.announce.newgroups is moderated.  I'm sure *tale* will either approve
it soon or let you know what the problem is.
--
Arthur L. Rubin: a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com (work) Beckman Instruments/Brea
216-5888@mcimail.com 70707.453@compuserve.com arthur@pnet01.cts.com (personal)
My opinions are my own, and do not represent those of my employer.
My interaction with our news system is unstable; if you want to be sure I see a post, mail it.
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.lists,news.admin,news.lists.ps-maps
From: behm@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (BEHM CHRISTOPHER JOSEPH)
Subject: A "YES!" vote for MTB newsgroup
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 18:57:35 GMT


	 Need I say more ?
				John Mastrangelo
				ice@massive.its.bldrdoc.gov
From: rjc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RFD: comp.lang.pop
Date: 25 Aug 92 18:02:55 GMT
Followup-To: news.groups
Organization: Human Communication Research Center
In-reply-to: ianr@syma.sussex.ac.uk's message of 24 Aug 92 14:15:43 GMT


"Jolly good idea" :-)

--
rjc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk				_O_
						 |<
Xref: sparky news.groups:17557 news.lists:376 news.admin:7429
From: reid@pa.dec.com (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.lists,news.admin
Subject: Re: arbitron data from these sites has expired
Keywords: arbitron, statistics, announcement
Date: 4 Sep 92 03:25:17 GMT
Organization: DEC Network Systems Laboratory

In article <1992Sep3.051052.4304@PA.dec.com> reid@decwrl.DEC.COM (Brian Reid) writes:
>The arbitron data from the following sites is more than 75 days old, and has
>therefore been discarded.

(Very long list of names)
Clearly something is wrong here; I'd better go check my system clocks and
things. These batch scripts are showing their age, aren't they?
Newsgroups: news.groups
From: Jonny Axelsson <jonnya@ifi.uio.no>
Subject: Re: RESULT: talk.politics new groups all fail
        02:01:53 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
        <d!hn1ma@lynx.unm.edu>
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 11:42:04 GMT
Originator: jonnya@urd.ifi.uio.no

I don't see the work done as wasted, but it was far too ambitious. Maybe next
time try far fewer groups, and make sure they are all good ones that are
*needed*. Scrap (at least) 3/4 of the groups, maybe divide the chosen ones
intotwo phases with their own RFD/CFV (10 groups is still a*major* reorg).

In view of this, the voting could be seen as a useful poll. Look at the
groups with a 2:1 ratio or better, subtract some, maybe add some, reformulate
the charter if need be to streamline the new structure, and my guess is that
the new *improved* talk.politics-away will succeed.

Jonny
From: rsk@aspen.circ.upenn.edu (Rich Kulawiec)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RFD: rec.music.makers.* groups
Date: 28 Aug 92 20:47:04 GMT
Organization: Cardiothoracic Imaging Research Center

In article <w1dnn=d@lynx.unm.edu> lazlo@triton.unm.edu (Lazlo Nibble) writes:
>As an aside to this RFD, I'd like to suggest that it might be time to move
>rec.music.makers.* up to rec.musicians.*, with appropriate name changes for
>any existing or proposed subgroups.

My inclination is not to do this, because it creates two subhierarchies
for music: rec.music.*, and rec.musicians.*.  I think that we're better
off with one hierarchy, even if that means that some of the names wind
up a bit longer than we'd like.