From: wirzeniu@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Lars Wirzenius) Subject: Re: Splitting comp.os.linux Date: 8 Sep 1992 23:00:47 GMT
woody@cs.utexas.edu (James Woodgate) writes:
>I know that the FAQ and such says not to use to alt.os.linux,
>but I still get news from there, so if it is still active
>is there a reason why not to use it. I've seen quite a few
>posts about splitting this newsgroup. Maybe we could direct
>newbie questions to alt.os.linux. This is not a very good
>long term solution, but it may be a good way to try out having
>more that one linux newsgroup, and it doesn't really require
>any extra work.
First we had a mailing list. Then we got alt.os.linux, and finally
comp.os.linux. We still seem to have all three of them. Unfortunately,
the alt group is killed, as much as an alt group ever is killed, which
means that an attempt has been made to rmgroup it, but it still exists
on some sites (alt groups usually are like this), and has a small amount
of traffic. But since only a rather small number of sites have
alt.os.linux anymore (not very many ever did have it), not very many
people read it anymore. So it is not a good idea to use alt.os.linux.
I don't personally happen to think that comp.os.linux has too much
traffic (but then I use a threaded newsreader, trn, not rn or some BBS
read-messages-in-number-order software), and with the possible exception
of a comp.os.linux.announce (I'm still a bit uncertain about it), I
can't think of any good way to do a split. In any case, my gut feeling
is that much of the traffic belongs to the category of not reading or
misunderstanding documentation (GCC installation seems to be a rather
popular thing to have trouble with), which of course may or may not be
due to the quality of documentation.
There is some work being done (or at least something was done a while
ago, I am uncertain of the current status) for a mailing list, to which
questions could be asked, and where some dedicated volunteers (who
hopefully know what they are talking about) answer questions.
But, and the main point of this article is this, if you are serious
about a split, please familiarize yourself with the newsgroup creation
guidelines and do a formal RFD. (If you don't understand what this
means, you definitely need to read news.announce.newusers.) Just
talking idly about it here doesn't do anything to further your goal.