From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Re: alt.colleges proposal
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 21:16:56 GMT
Organization: The Puzzle Palace, UKentucky

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 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
>any press in Ann Arbor (home of the University of Michigan), I posted
>an article to "rec.sport.football.college", and had a schedule within
>a day.  However, it was necessary to bother all of r.s.f.c for a MSU
>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.

>Thus, the idea of having a newsgroup devoted to individual colleges
>and universities.  I can imagine a large number of uses for such
>newsgroups: meeting fellow alumni, local items of interest, sports,
>job postings, etc.

Wouldn't "local items of interest" belong in a *local* newsgroup?
We already see posting of New York concert tickets in misc.forsale;
this would be equally useless.

>   * since "soc" is an official USENET hierarchy, the formal newsgroup
>     creation policies must be followed.  This would make it rather
>     cumbersome to create new groups for the many colleges and
>     universities.

There a REASON for the 'cumbersome' nature of group creation.  It's
intended to demonstrate a *WIDE-RANGING* interest in the proposed topic.

>   * the number of newsgroups will probably soon grow quite large; I'm
>     not sure if its appropriate to have them all under "soc.college".

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.

>Primarily for the first reason, I think these newsgroups should go
>into the "alt" hierarchy with the name "alt.colleges"; new groups can
>be created much more freely in the "alt" hierarchy.  I realize that
>"easy newsgroup creation" is a poor reason for putting something in
>"alt", but holding a formal CFD, CFV, etc. for each new college seems
>a bit much (someone correct me if I'm wrong on this).

Of course, creating alt.* newsgroups means that your propagation is
at the whim of each admin at each site.  This is also true for "main-
stream" newsgroups, but it affects alt.* to a much greater degree.

>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").
>   * eliminate confusion between identical abbreviations for different
>     colleges.  For example, in Michigan, CMU usually is taken to mean
>     Central Michigan University and not Carnige Mellon.
>   * there are a lot of colleges in the US.  Arranging things by state
>     helps keep things more manageable.

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.

>This proposal brings up a few issues: increased traffic, and
>cross-postings.  I would expect that traffic in any single newsgroup
>would be relatively small (say 10 articles/day), 

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?

>Many
>people my only be interested in their alma-matter, and don't want to
>wade through all the "noise" in the rec.sport.college groups.  

How about kill files?  Many, if not most, newsreaders support killfiles.

>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
>created in "alt", I've set the followup to "alt.config".

I don't think that this is a good idea.  If a given university is running
the news software, they should have local newsgroups.  If they are not
running newsgroups, you've eliminated the largest part of the potential
audience.

Several folks run mailing lists for their alma mater; for instance,
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 really believe that mass creation of an entire hierarchy is an 
EXTREMELY bad idea.

--Wes

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