From: bpwing@phoenix.princeton.edu (Ben Wing)
Newsgroups: alt.config
Date: 23 Jul 92 20:26:41 GMT
Subject: Re: CFD: out of body experience newsgroup name
Organization: Princeton University
X-Subliminal-Message: You can quit reading news anytime you want.

In article <1992Jul23.074656.15643@spdcc.com> gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo) writes:
|A move is afoot to create a newsgroup in the "alt." hierarchy to discuss
|"out of body experiences."  I hastily created a newsgroup, simply called
|"alt.oobe," a day ago, and have received a number of complaints about the
|name.  Being that I failed to follow what is apparently the accepted
|procedure of undertaking some discussion in alt.config, I am now calling
|for discussion on the matter.  Those interested in the discussion should
|follow up in alt.config.
|
|In article <65139@apadravya.princeton.edu> bpwing@phoenix.princeton.edu
|  (Ben Wing) writes:
|
|> This problem (of hasty newgrouping) seems to come up again and again ...
|> I'm really surprised how many people don't realize that you're supposed to
|> discuss (or at least mention) the creation of a new alt.* group in alt.config
|> before newgrouping it, just to avoid total chaos.
|
|How is one supposed to know?  I plead guilty, being the one who created
|alt.oobe, and I once again extend my profound apologies.  I'll bet there's
|something in one of the basic Usenet articles, which I haven't read for a
|while, though I've been using Usenet news for about a decade.
|

The guidelines for creating alt groups are floating around in lots of places,
one of which is called (surprisingly) something like "Guidelines for Creating
New Alt.* Groups" and is posted in alt.config and probably
news.announce.newusers.  Not to flame you in particular, but since sending
out a newgroup affects the entire worldwide network, it would seem sensible
to tread lightly and make sure you know what you're doing before acting.

|>    ...Imagine a bunch of groups like this:
|> 
|>    alt.afl
|>    alt.ode
|>    alt.g7
|>    alt.sids
|>    alt.tt

(well, I've never heard the acronyms "g7" or "tt" myself :-)

|
|Well, before reading the answers, I came up with answers for three of the
|five, two of which were correct (I said "American Football League"), though
|I certainly know about the AFL-CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations?).
|That having been said, I do take the point, and now can be persuaded to go
|for a longer name, though I think a good case could be made for keeping the
|shorter names (think of the UNIX tradition of short command names that are
|meaningless to outsiders: cp, cc, awk, vi, emacs, ln, cat, mv, etc., etc.).
|

Although UNIX wizards may pride themselves on the arcane knowledge they
demonstrate when they are able to write shell scripts like this --

echo $* | sed '
s/\([^/]\)$/\1\//
s/\/\/*/\//g
s/^\.\///
s/\/\.\//\//g
:here
s/^\/\.\.\//\//
s/[^./][^/]*\/\.\.\///
s/\.[^./][^/]*\/\.\.\///
s/\.\.[^/][^/]*\/\.\.\///
t here
/^\/$/q
s/\/$//
s/^$/./
'

-- such obscurity is considered a flaw in UNIX by many.

|>    alt.out-of-body is a good deal clearer to the outsider, and alt.dreams.oobe
|>    at least gives a hint as to what the group is about, even if it's not
|>    technically correct.
|
|Well, I think this matter should be decided by people who plan to use the
|newsgroup.  I'd rather see it as a subgroup of alt.paranormal than of
|alt.dreams.  Are the objections to "alt.paranormal.oobe" as strong as
|those to just plain "alt.oobe?"
|

This is surely better -- "alt.paranormal.out-of-body" might be even clearer.

|> I would say, send out an rmgroup for alt.oobe and newgroup something with a
|> sensible name.  Then at least there's a reasonable chance of the group getting
|> widely propagated, which is less likely with the current name.  Encourage
|> people in alt.dreams to use the new name, not the old one.  Send mail to
|> Bruce Becker (news@becker.gts.org) kindly requesting him not to force the old
|> name down people's throats.  Some systems will still have the old name sitting
|> around, but hopefully it'll become defunct.
|
|Well, first we have to agree on what a sensible name might be.  Are you saying
|that the newgroup message for alt.oobe is not automatically propagated through-
|out the net, and that some manual action is required to relay that control
|message to some tributaries?  I'll get in touch with Bruce - who I know, sorta.
|

Hmm, no -- newgroup messages get propagated everywhere automatically.
However, it's usually up to the discretion of each news administrator whether
they want to honor the message, and the clearer the group name is, the more
likely the group will be created at a particular site.  The comment about
Bruce Becker refers to his statement that "rmgroups should not be issued for
alt.* groups" and his attempt to keep around every newgroup'ed alt group,
including mistakes and spelling errors (to his credit, he lists

alt.fan.bruce-becker

and

alt.bruce.it.was.just.a.mistake

in his list of alt groups).


|> |_...I would accept alt.out-of-body,
|> |and think it has the advantage of being more descriptive than alt.oobe or
|> |alt.obe, but it's more of a hassle to type, and, since it's more than four-
|> |teen characters in length, the name would be truncated by sites running
|> |"notesfiles" rather than some flavor of Usenet news (I'm thinking especially
|> |of the IGC/APC systems (PeaceNet/EcoNet, and affiliates like GreenNet, Web,
|> |Pegasus, etc)).  Well, I guess "alt.out-of-bod" isn't all that bad.  :-)
|> 
|> The 14-character limit is for each segment of the group name, not for the
|> entire name -- otherwise groups like comp.sys.ibm.pc.* would be unreadable.
|
|No, no, no.  I'm talking about "notesfiles" software here - which has an
|absolute 14-character limit.  It's compatible with Usenet news at the level
|of respecting the news header conventions of RFC 1036, but it has a very
|different internal organization, and does actually limit the total length
|of newsgroup names to fourteen characters.  I'm sure of that fact, and have
|already had this discussion with one person who sent me a personal message
|recently making the same claim as Ben makes here.
|

Hmm, I don't know anything about "notesfiles".  However, it seems very strange
to me to limit the total name length to 14 characters; also "notesfiles" is
not Usenet, and I think it's important to avoid catering to particular
limitations in particular pieces of software (unfortunately we seem stuck
with the "14-character limit per group section", but that's because too many
people out there insist that Usenet cater to them rather than fix their own
software).


ben
--

Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.