From: dsmith@mailhost.aa.cad.slb.com (J. Daniel Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.config
Subject: Re: alt.colleges proposal
Date: 11 Sep 92 14:48:25 GMT
Organization: Schlumberger CAD/CAM; Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA)

In article <1992Sep9.171656.16411@ms.uky.edu> morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
>dsmith@aa.cad.slb.com (J. Daniel Smith) writes:
>>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.  
>I would think that this would also be something of a waste, since
>I *very* rarely see sustained traffic concerning a particular school.
This might be due in part to the fact that there is no place dedicated
to items of interest to a particular school.  Its rather difficult to
carry on sustained traffic about a particular school in newsgroups
like "soc.college" or "rec.sport.football.college".

>>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
>>football schedule; seems like too broad of an audience.  
>Not really; besides, there were probably 10-20 lurking readers who wound
>up saving a copy for themselves.
Actually, as I recall, no one posted something to r.s.f.c; instead one
person EMAIL me a copy....

>>Thus, the idea of having a newsgroup devoted to individual colleges
>Wouldn't "local items of interest" belong in a *local* newsgroup?
Some things would definately belong in a local newsgroup (e.g. "how do
I do xyz on machine abc?"), but there are a lot of "local" things that
would be of interest to a non-local audience.  Sports are one thing
that fit into this category.  Things like campus news would probably
appeal to alumni throughout the world.  

For example, right now there is a bit of news at MSU regarding the
presidental debate scheduled for 22 September.  Bush hasn't accepted
yet, but MSU is going ahead with plans.  This is all getting a fair
amount of local press, but not much national press.  Yet the topic
likely interest more than just those reading news in East Lansing.

>>   * since "soc" is an official USENET hierarchy, the formal newsgroup
>There a REASON for the 'cumbersome' nature of group creation.  It's
>intended to demonstrate a *WIDE-RANGING* interest in the proposed topic.
But there is a lot of stuff in "alt" that definately isn't of interest
to most people.  Two wrongs don't make a right, but there is already a
certain amount of precedent in the "alt" hierarchy.

>>   * the number of newsgroups will probably soon grow quite large; I'm
>Is it appropriate to have them ANYWHERE?  I don't really envision a
>single group of this set to achieve any sort of measurable traffic flow.
Then what's the harm?  If there isn't a lot of traffic, the only harm
is using up some more inodes for the directories.  While this can be a
bit problematic, I don't think its that big of deal.

>>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").
>What happens if someone doesn't know the state?
>
>What if someone in Oklahoma wants to find out about Morehead State University?
>Does he look for any newsgroup ending in .msu?  Even if he knows that Morehead
>is in Kentucky (but there may be others), does .ky.msu refer to Morehead State
>University or Murray State University?
>
>You're going to cause more confusion than it's worth.
The use of the state might be a bit redundant.  Since these are all
educational institutions, most of them are likely in the Internet
"edu" domain.  Thus, they already have a unique name; somebody else
has already figured what to call Murray State and Morehead State,
since "msu" was already taken by Michigan State (assuming these two
schools are on the Internet).

Using the state name would provide a slight convenience at the cost of
being a bit redundant.  A site in Michigan might want to hang on to
stuff from Michigan colleges longer than stuff from colleges in
California; using the state name provides an easy way to do this.
This would also allow Central Michigan to call their newsgroup
"alt.colleges.us.mi.cmu" if they wanted; I don't think this is a good
thing to do, since "cmu" is already used for Carnige Mellon, but it
could be done.

>>This proposal brings up a few issues: increased traffic, and
>I'd be surprised to see 5 articles/day for any but the most well-known
>colleges/universities.  Do you think that Transylvania University (a
>private university in Lexington, KY) is going to generate that much?
If that's the case, then the only real harm is inode usage on local
news systems.

>>wade through all the "noise" in the rec.sport.college groups.  
>How about kill files?  Many, if not most, newsreaders support killfiles.
Kill files are great (even more so in newsreaders like "nn").
However, a lot of casual news readers don't know about kill files.
Their solution is simply not to read the high-volume newsgroups.  (For
that matter, a lot of casual readers don't know how to post either...)

>>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
>there is a "UK Sports Newsletter" for UK fans/alums, and there is
>an "Hoosier News" list for IU fans/alums.  Perhaps you could start
>an MichState mailing list.....
I'm not interested in maintaining a MSU mailing list; that's one of
the reasons for the newsgroup proposal.  Once the group is created,
things pretty much run themselves.

But your mailing list thought goes directly towards one of my reasons
for wanting to create these newsgroups.  My guess is that if you look
at the distribution for the existing mailing lists you mention above,
there will be people from all over the world (or at least the country)
on them; that is they won't be some local contingent.  The only way to
reach all of these people without a mailing list is with a USENET
newsgroup.  Also, there could well be a large number of people who
might not even know such a mailing list exists for their alma-matter;
having a newsgroup would take care of that problem.  Finally, the fact
that there are mailing lists indicates that there is already a certain
amount of this type of traffic on the Internet.  Creating newsgroups
would provide a way to distribute that traffic to all interested
parties.

   Dan
-- 
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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