From: fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus James HENDERSON) Subject: Re: Splitting comp.os.linux, again Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1992 02:58:21 GMT
pgr@prg.ox.ac.uk (Partially Grown Rhododendron) writes:
>In <1992Oct25.170301.1223@athena.mit.edu>, M. Saggaf <alsaggaf@athena.mit.edu>
>writes:
>[about splitting by type]
>> I think this type of split is very inappropriate, [...]
>> ... 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).
>
>If somebody is interested in GCC, they read the appropriate newsgroups
>in the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Ditto for X. And bugs related to
>either of them, or just about anything else. None of these need, or
>should, be under the c.o.l.* hierarchy since they are *NOT* generally
>Linux specific.
EVERY post that I have seen relating to X this month has been Linux-specific.
Usually they are of the form "It gets to this point, then hangs... can anyone
help?" or "Has anybody ported X-foobar to Linux?" or such-like.
>The fact that people are postings articles of this nature at the moment
>is only showing that people are inappropriately posting to c.o.l.
>(If people posted appropriately, there wouldn't be a need for the split
>in the first place, of course -- if there was some way of encouraging them
>to them that would seem to be a more productive route than a c.o.l split.)
I think that posting these sort of Linux-specific articles to c.o.l is much
more appropriate than posting them elsewhere.
>[...]
>> I will restate here only the summary of my previous proposal, [...]
>Well, out of the list I agree with *.announce and *.misc (ditto with the
>main proposal).
>
>> *.programmer
>Linux programmers? Oh, you mean kernel hackers. There is an active
>mailing list for that. Or do you mean a more generic term? In which
>case, it is not Linux specific (just GCC then talk in either comp.lang.c
>or gnu.bugs.gcc).
What that would inevitably lead to is the posting of Linux-specific problems
in other newsgroups. I do read comp.lang.c most of the time (when I'm not
put off by the low signal-to-noise ratio there) and that group has
deteriorated a lot due to people posting a lot of system-specific - usually
DOS-specific - problems there.
I remember reading in somewhere that certain versions
of gcc wouldn't work with certain versions of the kernel, due to bugs
in the kernel memory management routines. Should these sorts of bugs be
posted to gnu.bugs.gcc? I think not. But the only other alternative
at the moment is comp.os.linux, which is just too overcrowded already.
>> *.apps
>How many *Linux* specific applications are there? Not many that I can see.
How many Linux specicific application-related *queries* do you see posted
to comp.os.linux? *Heaps*.
>> *.windows (or *.x)
>This is covered by the windows.x.i386unix RFD. No need for Linux specific.
ditto
>> *.hardware
>How much Linux specific hardware is there? None that I can see.
ditto
>> *.advocacy
>No comment on this. I don't really see any point in it, though. Argue
>about it if you like :-)
I don't see much danger in it, either. If you don't like the idea, then
don't subscribe!. The aim, I guess, is to keep the other groups in the
heirarchy free from religious issues, although I don't know how
successful it would be.
-- Fergus Henderson fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU This .signature virus is a self-referential statement that is true - but you will only be able to consistently believe it if you copy it to your own .signature file!