From: James Henrickson (ujlh@pool.info.sunyit.edu)
Date: 12/15/92


From: ujlh@pool.info.sunyit.edu (James Henrickson)
Subject: Re: A proposal for organizing comp.os.linux. [NEW-CHANNELS]
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 22:36:05 GMT

In article <1992Dec13.204007.17189@reed.edu> nelson@reed.edu (Nelson Minar) writes:
>(sorry for posting metadiscussion. I promise I'll only do it once!)
>

I didn't want to add to the traffic either, but I have a suggestion that
I haven't seen yet.

>However, if a few of the louder voices on comp.os.linux really wanted
>to, we could still split comp.os.linux this week. Instead of splitting
>it according to the normal Usenet voting procedures, split it into the
>alt groups. Alt groups don't require a vote - a week's discussion on
>alt.config seems to be sufficient.

This won't be good for people that can't get "alt" newsgroups, or for
sites that can't quickly subscribe to a new group. I don't have this
problem, just pointing out that some people do.

I think people should be encouraged (to put it nicely) to use other
newsgroups. We could add a section to the META-FAQ to remind people
which groups to use. For example, comp.windows.x.i386unix (I think
I got it right!) is for XFree86. A lot of X problems can be answered
there. Likewise, there are groups for "is there an X app that can do
this" (comp.windows.x.apps), "I'm new to Unix. What command should I
use to..." (comp.unix.wizards?), etc.

I think I've explained this fairly well. I won't attempt to define
what constitutes a "proper" message for comp.os.linux because I don't
want to scare people away, but I think that voluntary compliance with
an idea such as this would reduce the traffic in this news group.

-- 
Jim H.
*
* James L. Henrickson  |  "I don't need a signature, I need a job!"
* ujlh@sunyit.edu      |  BSCS, December 1992