From: dmsilev@athena.mit.edu (Daniel M Silevitch)
Subject: Split Survey results (1 of 2)
Keywords: Survey, split
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 01:11:51 GMT

Results of the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games newsgroup split survey
            pollster's comments

First of all, I would like to thank all of the people who took the time
to respond to my survey. With any luck, the results of this survey will
help us to come to a consensus about what, if anything, should be done
with this newsgroup.

The raw results show that approximately 2/3 of the people who responded
support a split of some sort. The overwhelming favorite for type of
split was genre-based, with different newsgroups for different types of
games. Trailing genre by considerable margins were two alternative
splits: Split by type (.announce, .reviews, .hints, .d, etc) and split
by manufacturer. (Split by type was not on the original survey, but
recieved enough write-in votes to be listed as a seperate category).
The remainder of the responses either opposed any sort of split, or
gave individual types.

The most common argument given in advocating the genre-based split was 
that people generally buy games for the type, i.e. hard-core flight-sim
people, or rpg addicts, and rarely buy games just on the basis of who
makes it. Another argument against the manufacturer-based split was
that manufacturers are more volatile than genres, and that a split of
this type would require frequent reorganization of the hypothetical
hierarchy. On the other hand, the main disadvantage of the genre
system, as many people pointed out, is classifying games that are on
the borderline between mulitple groups. A common example was Wing
Commander 2, which could fit into a .flight group as well as a .action 
group. 

46 seperate subgroups were proposed during the survey. Of these, 32
 recieved less than 10 votes over the entire survey. The remaining 14
groups ranged in support from .misc, .adventure, .rpg, and .flight,
all of which recieved at least 50 votes, to .military and .sports,
which recieved less than 20 each. Frequently, different names were
given for the same proposed subgroup. For example, .crpg vs. .rpg,
.military vs. .wargames vs. .combat. To make life easier for us all in
reading the results, I have combined these into single categories. The
most popular name is the one that appears in the main list, with other 
proposed names in parentheses.

Killfiles are in common use, with 40% of those responding to question
#4 using one. However, many of the kill-file users have noted that
their kill-file is either completely or mostly ineffective. Only 25%
of the killfile users said that their kill-file was effective. A
frequent comment from the people with ineffective kill-files was that
if subject lines were more standardized, killfiles would be more
effective. A few people also pointed out that the need for a killfile
could be eliminated by using a threaded newsreader (nn and trn were the
most commonly mentioned). A large portion of the kill-file users were
opposed to any proposed split, but there was another large segment
which favored the split on the basis that kill-files do not work in the
context of the group.

Many comments, from all sides of the issue were recieved, and a number
of them are included with the raw results. In general, the people who
supported the split mentioned not being able to keep up with the heavy
traffic in this group. They also mentioned the ineffectiveness of
killfiles. The two most common arguments from the people opposing the
split were that good killfiles/good newsreaders will reduce the
volume problem to tolerable levels, and that seperating the newsgroup
will lead to a destruction of a cross-pollenization (to quote from one
of the comments :-) that currently exists between the players of
different types of games.

That's all. Once again, thanks to all of those people who participated
in this survey. It was very interesting to read everyone's comments and
suggestions about this newsgroup, and I hope that I have helped in the
discussion about the future of comp.sys.ibm.pc.games, Feel free to
send me e-mail about this survey (no new forms please!) at
 dmsilev@athena.mit.edu. Thoughtful comments will be replied to
thoughtfully. Flames will either be counter-flamed or ignored,
depending on my mood :)

Daniel Silevitch                              dmsilev@athena.mit.edu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology






Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games