From: alsaggaf@athena.mit.edu (M. Saggaf) Subject: Re: Splitting comp.os.linux, again Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1992 17:03:01 GMT
In article <1992Oct25.150513.10656@cam-orl.co.uk> iwj@cam-orl.co.uk (Ian Jackson) writes:
[Explanation for the current state of RFD/CFV, then a proposal for
comp.os.linux.{announce, help, bug, discuss, misc}, then:]
>
>There was the choice of splitting by "application" or "component" (eg
>GCC, kernel, etc.) or by "type" (eg bugfix, question, announcement). I
>have plumped for the latter because most people would have to read all
>or most of the former groups and could get away with just .announce
>(if they didn't want to be on the "leading edge") in the latter case.
>
[...]
I think this type of split is very inappropriate, and I will
definitely vote against it. The main objective behind a split is that
people who are not interested in a particular subject (e.g. X11, gcc,
..etc) would not subscribe to the groups that discuss them. But
according to the above proposal, even if someone is interested only
in gcc or X, he has to subscribe to *.announce to learn about new
programs, to *.bug to find out about bugs, to *.help to answer his
questions, and to *.discuss for a discussion of the topic he/she is
interested in (say, gcc). Hence, even if you are interested in only
one aspect of linux, YOU HAVE TO SUBSCRIBE TO ALL SUBGROUPS. Surely
this defeats the purpose of the split.
Why should somebody who is interested only in hardware problems wade
through hundreds of articles discussing problems with X, gcc, kernel,
and other application software? Why should somebody who is trying to
make minicom run on his system go through countless articles about
SCSI drives and VGA cards? and why should somebody who is interested
in knowing whether sgtty is implemented go through all the above
articles? Also, the *.help subgroup is doomed. Most people who are
experienced enough about linux to be potential 'helpers' would not
bother subscribing to this subgroup. It's just like the *.wanted
dilemma. Take a look at how comp.archives.msdos.* is going to be
restructured mainly because people posting to *.wanted never receive
any replies until they post to the main group.
I will restate here only the summary of my previous proposal, see my
original article (Message-ID: <1992Oct22.011005.5292@athena.mit.edu>)
for an explanation of the rationale behind each proposed subgroup.
Here is the summary:
*.announce
*.programmer
*.apps
*.windows (or *.x)
*.hardware
*.advocacy
*.misc
This, IMHO, is a much better proposal. This way, if you are not
interested in X, gcc (programming), hardware, or pity discussions, you
can omit most of the subgroups and subscribe only to *.{apps, misc,
announce}. Again, refer to my original article for a discussion of
the various subgroups.