From: briank@kimbro.uucp (D. Brian Kimmel at home)
Subject: Re: Seattle Newsgroups (was CFD: seattle.misc)
Reply-To: briank@kimbro.Celestial.COM
Organization: Brian Kimmel - Home system, Seattle, Wa
Distribution: seattle
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 03:52:39 GMT

klg@statsci.com (Kevin L. Gross) writes:
>davidb@zeus.ce.washington.edu (David W. Barts) writes:
>   In article <1992Aug30.211125.946@jazzie.com>, sds@jazzie.com (Sean Shapira) writes:

>   > Some might say, "Isn't that what seattle.general is used for?"
>   > Yes, but if seattle.misc existed, the content of seattle.general
>   > might focus just a bit more on topics of "general" interest to
>   > the Seattle community....  Crossposts would be fine, especially
>   > if the followups were directed to seattle.misc.  Personally, I
>   > would put seattle.misc to use quite regularly.

>   I think that this naming strategy would just confuse people.  It would
>   result in a lot of crossposted material (or incorrectly posted stuff).

>   If the traffic volume on seattle.general gets large enough, I think it
>   is a better idea to create groups pertaining to the topic(s) that are
>   responsible for most of the volume.  Currently, the only topic I can
>   think of that would fit this description would be "seattle.politics".

>I wholeheartedly agree with David. Just scattering the postings to
>multiple groups would result in a lot of incorrect postings. The creation
>of seattle.politics would be the obvious volume cutter. I don't agree that
>the volume is large enough to warrant any new groups, but the increasing
>volume of politic'n in seattle.general might be a generating factor for
>seattle.politics.

There is more than just article count to be considered here.

As Bill England keeps pointing out, seattle general is distributed
to more than 10 percent (if I remember correctly) of all usenet
sites.  I did a sendsys to seattle distribution and got back 3/4
of a meg in sys files.  Many were from way outside the pnw area.
Quite a few were from Europe.  For their own reasons, a lot of
people seem to want to keep in touch with *our* :-) region.

Breaking up the seattle newsgroup(s) and creating a few new groups
would seem to be the proper thing to do.  If some people want to
cross-post among the various groups, well let them.  No harm is
done; the article only gets sent once (bandwidth).  If some sites
(dos perhaps) have to store cross-posted articles, that is their
problem, not the nets.

Since there is no formal mechanism for creating local or area news-
groups, I hereby volunteer to create any seattle newsgroups needed
and I will also send out some periodic charter/faq notices while the
newsgroups are still fairly new.

I have noticed a few articles (mis)posted to seattle.forsale, therefor
I propose creating one.  It seem a little unusual for an area not to
have a forsale group.  Here is a charter notice that I created for
such a group...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the charter for seattle.forsale.

This newsgroup was created to list *things* that you wish to sell and
*things* that you wish to purchase and *things* that you wish to trade.

Although the newsgroup is seattle, general consensus is that the 
geographical area is more like the Puget Sound area.  It would be nice
if we can keep the distribution of this newsgroup within the Puget Sound
area and not spread all over the world as seattle.general is currently.
This should help to prevent wasting bandwidth; after all how many East
Coasters are going to by a Seattle automobile?  If it is a *thing* of
truly universal desirability then cross post it to seattle.general.

Cross-postings to other appropriate area forsale newsgroups is encouraged.

While followup postings are not prohibited, they should be limited
to corrections, cancellation and pointing out errors.  General
discussions should be carried out in other more appropriate groups.

The subject line should start off with 'FOR SALE', 'WANTED', 'FOR RENT',
'YARD SALE' or other appropriate classification followed by a description
of the *thing*.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, here is a list I posted some time ago that lays out a possible
seattle hierarchy

Date: Wed, 1 Jul 92 13:19:50 PDT
Newsgroups: seattle.admin
Distribution: seattle
Subject: Newsgroups

How about the following:
 * seattle.admin          Administravia
   seattle.events         Announcements, notices etc.
   seattle.forsale        Items for sale in the area
 * seattle.general        Catchall - general postings
   seattle.politics       Political discussions
   seattle.talk           BBS style chat through a newsgroup
 * seattle.test           Testing with a few scattered auto-reply sites.  

As usual, comments are desired.

Unless I hear a general outcry, I will create seattle.forsale in about
a week.
-- 
D. Brian Kimmel - home system	(206) 937-5742      Modem: (206) 937-6779
briank@Kimbro.UUCP              uunet!camco!kimbro!briank
briank@Kimbro.SeaSlug.ORG
-- 
D. Brian Kimmel - home system	(206) 937-5742      Modem: (206) 937-6779
briank@Kimbro.UUCP              uunet!camco!kimbro!briank
briank@Kimbro.SeaSlug.ORG