From: koreth@spud.Hyperion.COM (Steven Grimm)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: RFD: rec.arts.startrek.reviews moderated
Date: 21 Jan 1993 09:20:28 -0800
Organization: Hyperion, Mountain View, CA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: spud.hyperion.com

In <C14G0v.CqF@cs.uiuc.edu> noe@cs.uiuc.edu (Roger Noe) writes:
>In article <1jga0uINNdb6@spud.Hyperion.COM> koreth@spud.Hyperion.COM (Steven Grimm) writes:
>>- Some people have to pay for incoming mail, but get news for free or for
>>  much less money.  This is especially common outside the US.
>This is still a relatively uncommon practice.

I was given to believe it was the norm for small sites in Germany, the
Netherlands, and Australia, at least.  It's possible I've heard wrong,
but nonetheless I would still assert that a mailing list would cost extra
for a bigger portion of the Usenet community than, say, crossposting would.

>...some systems may be refusing r.a.st.current because of volume.  Having been
>a news administrator who has had to make such hard choices, I think
>it's more likely that almost anyone who has felt the need to cut
>r.a.st.current from the list of newsgroups being received would just
>go ahead and cut off all r.a.st subgroups.  This would also eliminate
>r.a.st.reviews, but wouldn't touch a mailing list.

As another data point, I've also run such a site; we got r.a.s.info and none
of the other groups.  And in any case, it's perfectly normal (and, I think,
a very good idea) to gateway the newsgroup to a mailing list, thereby making
the reviews available to everyone in their format of choice.

>>- I can more easily kill subjects I'm not interested in if reviews appear as
>>  news articles.  Yes, I could pipe the mail into a local newsgroup...
>Because (1) not a lot of people would be able to pipe e-mail into a
>local newsgroup, and (2) a local newsgroup distributed by mailing list
>is an entirely different beast than a Usenet-wide newsgroup.

That's not the point I was trying to make.  The point was that if I wanted
the extra functionality I get from a newsgroup full of reviews, I'd almost
have to pipe the list into a local group.  That not a lot of people would
be able to do so is an argument for making the articles available in news
format to everyone who wants them.

>>- I can follow up to the review directly...
>One key provision in the charter of r.a.st.reviews is that there would
>be no follow-ups.  This point is contrary to that proposal, hence it
>is moot.

Not at all.  That's what the "Followup-To:" header line is for.  My followup
will go into a different group, but I can still post it very easily.

>>- A mailing list is much less visible than a newsgroup.
>It can easily be mentioned in the FAQ lists.  It'll be plenty visible.

People not reading FAQs is a chronic problem on the net.  (A problem, for
those who're interested, that's being discussed over on news.future at the
moment.)  Almost everyone who reads news and gets r.a.s.* will see a new
group; only those who bother to read the FAQ, which excludes people who've
read it in the past and don't look at it every time it's posted, will see the
mention of a mailing list there.

>>- With news, I can wait until after I've seen the episode, then (assuming my
>>  site keeps articles around for a week) go read all the reviews about it.
>With mail, you're not dependent on how frequently your local system
>expires news articles, you save what you want to and remove the files...

You can save a news article as easily as you can save a mail message, but you
_have_ to save a mail message (or leave it cluttering up your mailbox) if you
want to see it tomorrow night.

>>  With mail, I have to either save the reviews by hand or make some sort of
>>  alias or filter.
>I seriously doubt there are many users who have learned how to
>manipulate news articles this way without having first learned e-mail
>management.

The point is that news eliminates the need to manipulate the articles in the
first place.  All the manipulation of mail was giving me were the advantages
that news has inherently.

>There are so many excellent tools for mailing list management, article
>archival and e-mail retrieval now that it's almost trivial to set up a
>mailing list with these features [archiving old reviews].

Trivial to set up, sure, but not trivial to use, at least from a time
standpoint.  I can say "nn -x rec.arts.startrek.reviews" and see all the
reviews to date for the episode I just watched.  Or I can send mail to an
archive server and come back at some point in the future to see if its
response has shown up yet.  Which is more convenient for the user?

>A mailing list may be started IMMEDIATELY, with no approval from
>anyone else.
>No one loses anything if a mailing list is started up now.  Everyone wins.

That's a great argument for creating the list now.  Go for it.  It's not
an argument for not continuing to press on with the newsgroup.  The two can
be gatewayed together once the group is created, especially easy if the
list moderator is the group moderator.  No one loses if the newsgroup is
created now (or as soon as possible).

-Steve
Newsgroups: news.groups