Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/03/07/18:29:43
Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il> wrote:
>David Jenkins wrote:
>> How about splitting the group???
>
>I don't think this will help in any way. People who only read the
>newbie group will be forever locked in their newbie status (because
>they aren't exposed to the more complicated issues). People who read
>both groups will have to read two groups instead of one, and the
>cross-posting will render the whole arrangement all but useless.
>
>Also, since we cannot know that great ideas won't be ever born during
>newbie discussion, I think most people will read both groups anyway.
I don't think that your fears are justified. What you get with
more than one newsgroup is the individual freedom to choose how much
djgpp you want. Newbies are free to read both groups, and probably
will, but they'll be more likely to post newbie questions to the
newbie group. Diehard djgpp junkies can read all the groups they want.
And I expect that there's a large group of people that only get to
c.o.m.djgpp a couple of times per week, at which point they find
hundreds of posts that they have to sort through to find the few that
are interesting enough. Of course splitting the group won't reduce
the number of posts (it might actually increase the number slightly),
but it allows everyone a little flexibility in picking which kinds
of post they want or don't want to read.
I also don't believe that cross posting will be as much of a problem
as you fear. Take a look at the linux hierarchy; there's not too much
cross posting there. In any case, with most news readers, if you've
already read and discarded a post in one group it gets discarded from
all the groups that you subscribe to.
Splitting is a natural evolution of groups that grow in popularity
and volume. The only reason to resist it is if there is really no
need for it. i.e., if the group is really not growing. C.o.m.djgpp
is growing, and I think that splitting the group is a perfectly
natural and reasonable thing to do at some point. The question to
be answered right now is if this is a good time to make the split.
I think it is, or at least very close to it.
Having said that, I propose a small hierarchy of groups:
c.o.m.djgpp what doesn't fit in the other groups
c.o.m.djgpp.newbie (there must be a better name for this!)
c.o.m.djgpp.graphics
c.o.m.djgpp.announce mirror of the mailing list
Note the the announce group could be fully moderated without much
effort.
Concerning moderating the group: I am fundamentally against moderating
discussion groups, especially existing ones. The problem is that even
if it's done well, moderation often leads to resentment and infighting
about the moderators, and how moderation is done. I think it works well
only for groups that are not discussion based, for example .announce
type groups. Retro-Moderation really doesn't change this fact if the
moderators are given the freedom to delete posts that some people might
think are worth reading. The exception to this is a very limited form
of R-M that has explicit rules that are not open to much interpretation.
For example, the charter might specify that all spam, commercial ads, and
anything crossposted to more than three groups will automatically be
deleted.
As has already been suggested, a thread gone awry can often be ended
with just a firm request from DJ -- or Eli, though he never does it.
On the other hand, a fully moderated mailing list might work and could
even be linked with usenet. In other words, a moderator would select
suitable posts and email submissions to send to the list. There'd be
no point in reading that AND the newsgroup because one would be a
subset of the other.
-- Dave Cigna
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