🚀 go-pugleaf

	David Pimmel, listowner of Blues-l, asked me to post the
following.

Jim McIntosh (jim@american.edu) writes in response to the discussion
	of bit.listserv.blues-l:

> (1) If a mainstream group exists on the same subject matter, then it
>     should be used rather than setting up another group on the same
>     topic.

Currently there is not a mainstream group for the discussion of the
blues.  The closest thing is rec.music.bluenote which seems to
primarily cater to jazz discussion.  A proposal is in the works to
create a blues newsgroup, however, based on past events, it seems
unlikely that the proposal will pass.  First, it has been proposed
several times in the past and has never reached the stringent USENET
requirements for group creation.  Second, there is a very vocal group
of r.m.b readers who speak adamantly against any change in their group
format, something that a blues newsgroup woukld be.

Therefore the bit.listserv.blues-l is the best and easiest way to get
blues discussion to the group to the larger USENET audience.  If a
blues group under the rec hierarchy is eventually formed then perhaps
the location of the link form the mailing list should be reexamined
but in the meantime I think the bit.listserv.blues-l group will best
serve the blues newsreading community very well.


> (2) Your statement above implies that the sole purpose of the new group
>     is simply to make life easier for a subset of the 648 subscribers to
>     BLUES-L. You may not realize you are asking us to spend machine
>     resources gateway'ing the group, asking the whole Usenet community to
>     spend resources sending these posts around the world, and then asking
>     tens of thousands Usenet sites to spend disk resources keeping your
>     posts on-line. This seems like a lot of money to just make life
>     easier for a relatively small number of people.
>

I think this is somewhat oversimplifying things.  Yes it will make reading
the list easier from some current members.  But there are also a lot of
people who are simply unable to read a list as a mailing list for whom a
newsgroup is the only option.  And I believe there is a signifigant number
of such people.  One proof is the continuing support for a blues
newsgroup.  While rec.music.blues or rec.music. bluenote.blues is
frequently voted down, it does continue to come back up for vote again and
again.  This is a debate that occurs twice a year or so.  This is strong
indication to me that there is widespread interest in a group of this
nature. 


David Pimmel
listowner, blues-l
pimmel@cs.wisc.edu