From: rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org (Felix S. Gallo) Subject: Re: Splitting comp.os.linux, again Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1992 07:37:24 GMT
jaggy@purplet.demon.co.uk (Mike Jagdis) writes:
>
>Bollocks to you too :-). Those on the FidoNet end *would* have to wade
>through every single duplicate. They would also have separate copies in each
>newsgroup. If they were getting a FidoNet feed they would also be paying to
>transfer n copies of each message - possibly as slowly as 2400 baud. That's
>the way FidoNet works and will continue to work despite your (and others')
>denials.
>
If that's the way fidonet works, then fidonet is broken and needs to
be fixed. Certainly, if what you say is true, then I can't comprehend
how fidonet has dealt with the hundreds of newsgroups which have split
or been created in the last few years. In any case, assuming for the
moment that fidonet is irreparably broken and 'will continue to work'
that way despite all sense to the contrary, and assuming that the number
of people who use fidonet is significant enough that they should sway
major usenet policy decisions, and assuming that crossposting is going
to be rampant in the proposed newsgroups -- which it is not in many
other split-heirarchy groups like those proposed -- what prevents someone
smart from fidonet from writing the exceedingly simple front end to
the fidonet feed that massages the groups appropriately and sends out
the correct postings? Heck, you could do it in *perl*. You could
do it in *sh*.
I'm interested in hearing a reasonable reason why comp.os.linux shouldn't
follow the path of every group that gets this large and chaotic and
unreadable. Unless it turns out, and I could be wrong on this, that
Fidonet users make up more than 1% of the total users, I think the
fidonet argument is a large boondoggle. The "we shouldn't split it,
because forcing everyone to read all the articles is a boon to
development because you see things you wouldn't normally see" is another
boondoggle ("how do I get my trident clocks working" is not opening
my eyes to variety). I know there are smart people out there that
oppose this -- why, besides fidonet and variety?
> Usenet is not just a network of Unix machines. Think about it...
Moreover, if usenet appealed to the lowest common denominator, we'd
be reading news off teletypes at 110 baud. Think about it.
>
> Mike
>
-- ============================================================================ Felix Sebastian Gallo rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org ============================================================================