From: mfterman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Mutant for Hire)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics
Subject: META: How to split?
Date: 15 Apr 92 04:07:31 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
Originator: news@ernie.Princeton.EDU

Okay, I am not against a split for this group, were it properly
handled. That is, the split were done in an intelligent and sane
manner. After having survived sf-lovers breaking up, and looked at the
breakup of many groups, I feel I've learned a bit about the subject.

First, you need to split the group in a way that there are a large
number of groups that everyone does not read, the key is that they
disagree on which groups not to read.

With rec.arts.comics, it would make greatest sense for there to be a
split by genre, with a few additional groups to handle the stuff left
over. rec.arts.comics.superhero, rec.arts.comics.sf, and so on. I'd
probably place fantasy in the sf category, see endless debates about
the sf-lovers split in explanation. It would deal with Ironwood and
Cerebus and even the horrible stuff Blair puts out. You'd have other
categories like .horror and others.

There would also be .creators and .misc, the former to handle
discussions about a writer, the latter to catch anything that comes up
that doesn't fit elsewhere. The .creators group would probably handle
industry speculation like the Malibu stuff as well. One major problem
is to handle bleedover between .creators and the genre categories, but
there's always that problem on the net.

If you really wanted to, you could subdivide superhero by publisher,
if there was enough support, or simply create subdivisions for Marvel
and DC. Personally, I figure there's enough confusion already about
where Sandman would be talked about. Also, the problem with an .indy
category is that people would talk about Malibu stuff there, when it
really should go along with all the other superhero discussions.

Now, creating new groups one at a time isn't a bad idea about going
about it. The last group you'd create under such a system would be
.superhero, with rec.arts.comics being renamed as rec.arts.comics.misc
as is traditional in these matters. First group I'd see created would
be something like .creators, if nothing else, we could put all the
Peter David flame wars in that group. Some of the less popular genres
could be created. Of course, given traffic load, one could create a
non-superhero category and still get managable traffic. But I'm a
perfectionist and like neat categorization systems.

Its not a perfect system. Sandman gets strangely categorized, and of
course Miracleman would probably generate a flame war over whether it
was a superhero comic or something belonging in the sf category. But
it would split the traffic and would split the readership up. Creating
a few special purpose groups now might work. They would have to
attract the lower volume threads, rather than the high volume ones.


-- 
  Martin Terman, Mutant for Hire, Mad Scientist, Priest of Shub-Internet
mfterman@phoenix.princeton.edu mfterman@pucc.bitnet terman@pupgga.princeton.edu
The above text is disclaimer challenged, flaming it isn't politically correct
      "I must be making progress, she's biting my leg." - Martin Terman