🚀 go-pugleaf

Adam Levin <alevin@ari.net> writes:

>I've done my research. If you look yourself, you will find that there are
>FAQs for creation of groups under "alt." and "rec." hierarchies that are
>quite different from each other. There is no universal FAQ that applies to
>all news hierarchies.

As far as I know, no one ever said there were.

>If you look at the one for the "alt" hierarchy, you will see that the
>guidelines are few. There is no vote required, it's basically up to the
>news admin at the site to decide whether the group should be added. If
>you'd like me to quote the FAQ to you, I can.

That's the whole idea behind the alt.* newsgroups; to be more free and
easy on the creation of newsgroups.

>Since nobody responded to my request for guidelines for balt, and a
>thorough search turned up no such guidelines, I took action and requested
>that people add it. It was not FORCED on you as you seem to imply by your
>little analogy. I did not break into your office, log into your machine
>and add it.

I don't think anyone says that they were forced into adding it. It's just
that it was added incorrectly. I would have hoped that your research would
have made it a little more clear that the balt.* hierarchy is more like
the comp/rec/etc... groups rather than the very special-case alt.

At the very least, you should have gotten a flavor that newsgroups should
only be created when there's a need for them. The voting process is required
to ensure that the rest of the UseNet groups don't fall into the sillyness
that's abundantly clear in the alt.* hierarchy.

The point is that you made the request, NO ONE responded to it, signaling
to me at least very very little interest. You then did research into how to
create newsgroups and saw that guidelines for alt. were very easy but for
the rest of them they had very specific guidelines and procedures. Nonetheless,
knowing that, you still went ahead and had the group created. No votes,
no discussion, no interest, but still created.

Maybe I'm being an old stick-in-the-mud, but there _are_ procedures and
standards for things; even though companies like Netscape, who should
know better, seem indifferent to that.

>As I said to Howard, it's up to you if you want to add it to Jagunet's
>news server.

I hope Howard does nothing of the kind, especially since he's with
ABSnet, not jaguNET <g>

>If you decide not to, it's your users who have an interest
>in the goings on in the Baltimore music scene who will miss out. The
>decision is yours.

I don't know how to take the above... It seems to imply that you were
totally in the right and that sticklers like Howard and I are doing
a disservice to our users by suggesting that procedures be followed?

Usenet is distributed... what good is it if a few local ISPs carry balt.music
if it's not a recognized valid newsgroup? Did you offer to fix this situation
by creating a valid newgroup control message? I did. Did you offer to
write the proposal and see that the group gets officially accepted? I did.

If you really feel strongly about this group, and it's obvious that you
do, then maybe you should put a little more effort into making it official
rather than just saying "well, what's done is done... you don't have to
play if you don't want to." That solves nothing at all.

Finally, I don't want to come off as preachy or anything... I certainly
am not taking any of this personally, and I hope that no one is as well.
At the very least, this is being useful since it will result in a cut-and-
dried, with no possible measure for misinterpretation, procedure and
protocol for the balt.* hierarchy.
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