🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <345c4d$c1n@lynx.unm.edu>, chadwick@leo.unm.edu (john craven chadwick) writes:
>Keywords:BRAD.LINDER@LOCAL-EXCHANGE.SPRINT.COM
>A discussion is currently underway to establish a Netnews gateway for 
Museum-L. Many subscribers on the list have expressed an interest in 
having access to the group via a newsgroup. With nearly 1000 subscribers 
the time seems right for this expansion.

With nearly 1000 subscribers you would have no difficulty at all passing
a Big 7 group proposal (to which you could gate this mailing list). Big 7
groups have significantly better propagation that bit groups. I don't
know exactly but a Bit group would probably be available at 40-45% of
all sites while a Big 7 group would be available at 60-70% of all sites.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jonathan Grobe  grobe@ins.infonet.net

chadwick@leo.unm.edu (john craven chadwick) writes:

>>Many subscribers on [MUSEUM-L] have expressed an interest in 
>>having access to the group via a newsgroup. ...

Jonathan Grobe <grobe@ins.infonet.net> wrote:

>With nearly 1000 subscribers you would have no difficulty at all passing
>a Big 7 group proposal (to which you could gate this mailing list)....

True, if at least 100 of them vote, and enough vote YES rather than
NO.  Unlike bit.*, the "big 7" have a vote requirement.

"Big 7" newsgroups get far better propagation on average than bit.*
ones do (about twice as many sites carry them).  This means more
subscribers can switch to reading via Usenet.  It also means more
new readers, and thus possibly more traffic.  Moderating the 
newsgroup is a good way to control the negative aspects of wider
availability.  It requires some work, but usually not as much work
as handling bounced mail from subscribers.  This assumes that the
moderation is mostly automated.

I'd recommend a more useful name than bit.listserv.museum-l (the
conventional form);  bit.curation.museum perhaps, to make a 
hierarchy where other related newsgroups could be added later.

If the newsgroup were put in the "big 7", where should it go?

-- 
	Una Smith			smith-una@yale.edu

Department of Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT  06520-8104  USA

In article <348a35$9fn@news.ycc.yale.edu>,
Una Smith <una@doliolum.biology.yale.edu> wrote, among other things:
 
>It also means more new readers, and thus possibly more traffic.

This is undoubtedly a _good_ thing (see below), although the prospect
has been creating some anxiety among discussants in the MUSEUM-L list.

>Moderating the newsgroup is a good way to control the negative
>aspects of wider availability.

Care to elaborate on negative aspects, beyond the obvious  --more volume,
more "crank and junk mail", more bounced mail (as you note below)?

>It requires some work, but usually not as much work
>as handling bounced mail from subscribers.

You mean "handling bounced mail" on a LISTSERV? Or, on a newsgroup?

>This assumes that the moderation is mostly automated.

Are you referring to moderation of a newsgroup or of a LISTSERV? I.e.,
at which of these places do the moderation tools exist (I know about
what can be done on LISTSERV; not about what can be done on a
newsgroup, both in the context of a gateway'd newsgroup (Jim McIntosh
tried to explain some aspects of gateway control, but I need to get more
clarification) and of a "pure" newsgroup).

>I'd recommend a more useful name than bit.listserv.museum-l (the
>conventional form);

bit.listserv doesn't contribute much to indicate the subject matter or
focus of this discussion group, I agree. But, perhaps "museum" (or
museum-l) does say it all (see below), and doesn't need to be further
"placed".

>bit.curation.museum perhaps, to make a 
>hierarchy where other related newsgroups could be added later.

I don't think the limits of the "museum" discussions are bounded by
"curation". Perhaps it would be easier to argue the other way around,
i.e., museum.curation, museum.xxx, etc. But, I believe that readers and
contributors to a museum discussion are not so lucky as to need to
worry about breaking down the topic into subtopics, even in the
foreseeable future; I think it would be a disservice, for some years
to come, to force a sorting of discussion topics into separate groups.
(There are already many, many other groups in existence, dealing with
computer information systems, images, academic disciplines (closely allied
to museums/collections), art/music, etc., in which Museum-L subscribers
can and do participate.)

>If the newsgroup were put in the "big 7", where should it go?

This question, raised by Jonathan Grobe as well, is challenging, and
digs deeper than was perhaps intended.

"Museum", as an enterprise, is science. But, it's also art, it's
education, it's business and management, it's information science and
service and peddling, it's a partner of most academic disciplines and many
other human activities (all of which create junk of some sort that
becomes artifacts in time, and coveted/studied/conserved/etc by museums).

"Museums" is lots of things to lots of people, and in browsing around
the major groups of newsgroups, I find it difficult to place it
objectively into any particular group (precisely because of its breadth
of scope), with perhaps the exception of "info." (It could be
artibrarily put into bit., alt., misc., but if that's the case, putting
it into bit. probably makes the most sense.)

Comments?
Peter Rauch

Una Smith <smith-una@yale.edu> wrote:
 
>>It also means more new readers, and thus possibly more traffic.

Museum Informatics Project <mip-arch@garnet.berkeley.edu> wrote:

>This is undoubtedly a _good_ thing (see below), although the prospect
>has been creating some anxiety among discussants in the MUSEUM-L list.

It's not a good thing if enough MUSEUM-L subscribers vote NO,
to prevent their mailboxes being stuffed with more traffic;  
you must consider this factor when deciding where in Usenet to
put the gateway:  sci.* and misc.* both require a vote, bit.*
does not.


>>Moderating the newsgroup is a good way to control the negative
>>aspects of wider availability.

>Care to elaborate on negative aspects, beyond the obvious ...

I mean simply more traffic, especially more off-topic traffic
*if* the newsgroup is badly named.

You will see virtually no bounced mail from Usenet (it does
sometimes happen, but it is very rare).  Over all, adding a
newsgroup will move *many* subscribers to Usenet, reducing 
the rate of bounced messages relative to readership.


>>It requires some work, but usually not as much work
>>as handling bounced mail from subscribers.

>You mean "handling bounced mail" on a LISTSERV?

Yes, bounced mail from subscribers on the mailing list end.
The better the propagation of the newsgroup, the larger the
fraction of readers who read via Usenet instead of e-mail.

>>This assumes that the moderation is mostly automated.

>Are you referring to moderation of a newsgroup or of a LISTSERV?

Either.  Moderation of a newsgroup works like this:  special
tables are kept on each Usenet server, indicating moderated
newsgroups, and the e-mail address of the moderator (usually
this is an alias).  All articles posted to that newsgroup
will be automatically re-directed to the moderator, who will
decide whether to post the article to the newsgroup.  The
moderator has the discretion of setting up an automatic
approval mechanism, so all articles are posted immediately,
or a first-time approval mechanism, so on the first attempt
to post an article to that newsgroup, the moderator decides
whether the poster may have automatic permission to post in
the future.  More information about these mechanisms can be
obtained on request from moderators-advice@uunet.uu.net.
Note, because of the need to update tables on up to 200,000
Usenet servers, it is best not to change the moderation
status of a newsgroup:  this decision should be made at the
outset.

Jim MacIntosh has already described for you several other
methods of using LISTSERV in combination with the behavior
of the list/newsgroup gateway to control traffic on the
mailing list side.  All these methods and more are now in
use on numerous forums.  You'll have to think about the
unique character of MUSEUM-L, and decide from that what
the best approach may be.


If you choose to go in a "big 7" Usenet hierarchy, you *must*
have a useful naming structure.  Perhaps sci.infosystems.museum?

There are at least 6 library-related mailing lists now gated
to bit.listserv.*;  it would be good to see these grouped
together.  Perhaps it's time to organize them into, say,
bit.infosystems.*, or move them over wholesale to sci.*...


-- 
	Una Smith			smith-una@yale.edu

Department of Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT  06520-8104  USA

In article <34amhs$1u9@news.ycc.yale.edu>,
Una Smith <una@doliolum.biology.yale.edu> wrote:

>Una Smith <smith-una@yale.edu> wrote:
  
>>>It also means more new readers, and thus possibly more traffic.
 
>Museum Informatics Project <mip-arch@garnet.berkeley.edu> wrote:
 
>>This is undoubtedly a _good_ thing
 
>It's not a good thing if enough MUSEUM-L subscribers vote NO,
>to prevent their mailboxes being stuffed with more traffic;  

Right you are. I was responding, assuming that you meant the group was
already established.
 
>If you choose to go in a "big 7" Usenet hierarchy, you *must*
>have a useful naming structure.  Perhaps sci.infosystems.museum?

I like to say that museums are in the information business, to twist
the minds of many who (still) think of museums as in the collections
business. But, that aside, I think that both "sci" and "infosystems"
are probably going to create lots of (negative) discussion among
discussants, probably for some good reasons.

>There are at least 6 library-related mailing lists now gated
>to bit.listserv.*;  it would be good to see these grouped
>together.  Perhaps it's time to organize them into, say,
>bit.infosystems.*, or move them over wholesale to sci.*...

Or, perhaps in *.collections.*.  Museums, libraries, archives, personal
collections, are all kinds of collections, and have _some_ common problems,
goals, things to discuss. Now, whether it is bit.* (which wouldn't work
for groups/lists that don't come from bit-world), or something else
(wish there were something else than sci.* ??), needs further discussion.

BTW, this gateway thing (i.e., read: initiative/responsibility) is John
Chadwick's baby (MUSEUM-L List Owner); I'm just sticking my 2-cents in here
as an interested MUSEUM-L'er.
Peter Rauch

Museum Informatics Project <mip-arch@garnet.berkeley.edu> wrote:

>I like to say that museums are in the information business, to twist
>the minds of many who (still) think of museums as in the collections
>business. But, that aside, I think that both "sci" and "infosystems"
>are probably going to create lots of (negative) discussion among
>discussants, probably for some good reasons. ...

Why is "infosystems" a problem?  What reasons?  Can you suggest a
better term?  Perhaps it would be good to discuss with the readers,
even though many would object;  maybe someone will come up with
the perfect solution.


>Or, perhaps in *.collections.*.  Museums, libraries, archives, personal
>collections, are all kinds of collections ...

Libraries are moving away from being repositories of collections and
toward being information centers.  And I think so are museums;  it's
no longer enough to just collect stuff and put it on a shelf.

I too wish there were another major academic hierarchy beside sci.*.
Bit.* is the closest there is to one, and given trends in Usenet 
now, I think we're better off developing bit.* as that hierarchy,
rather than trying to create acad.* or something like it.  This
was precisely what I had in mind back in 1986 (!) when I asked the
person who was then maintainer of NETNEWS to build in a gateway
feature to couple LISTSERV mailing lists with Usenet newsgroups.
I think bit.* can be made into such a hierarchy if two things are
done:  (1) new newsgroups in bit.* but not in bit.listserv.* are
given constructive names, and (2) we begin using "mainstream"
Usenet procedures to create these newsgroups:  proposals, voting,
etc.  No. 1 is probably by far the more important step to take.

Is anyone relaying the pertinent parts of this discussion back to
the Museum-L readers?

-- 
	Una Smith			smith-una@yale.edu

Department of Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT  06520-8104  USA

In article <34amhs$1u9@news.ycc.yale.edu>,
Una Smith <una@doliolum.biology.yale.edu> wrote:
>If you choose to go in a "big 7" Usenet hierarchy, you *must*
>have a useful naming structure.  Perhaps sci.infosystems.museum?

The above is in reference to a proposal to move a 1000-subscriber mailing 
list about museums to a Big 7 newgroup.

sci.infosystems.museum?  Buh?

Yeah, I guess 'group advice' is REALLY, REALLY GOOD at picking names, as 
Una bragged in the 'group advice' thread on news.groups.  
-- 
Joel Furr(ian): Armenian crook/criminal/wacko, Big Kahuna of alt.fan.lemurs,
Moderator of alt.folklore.suburban and comp.society.folklore, Co-Moderator
of soc.history.war.world-war-ii, and purveyor of cool net.collectibles. 
Will create newsgroups for food.  Join 'netstuff' for info on net t-shirts.

jfurr@acpub.duke.edu (Joel K. Furr) writes:

>sci.infosystems.museum?  Buh?
>
>Yeah, I guess 'group advice' is REALLY, REALLY GOOD at picking names, as
>Una bragged in the 'group advice' thread on news.groups.

Agreed that sci.infosystems.museums is a ridiculous name; IMHO the "no
new second level hierarchies" idea is being taken much too far.

But the only comment I've seen Una make that even remotely resembles
your description was to the effect that group-advice were good, but
not all-knowing - which sounds like a sensible admission of human
fallibility to me, not bragging. And certainly "REALLY, REALLY GOOD"
is not the same thing as "good". Unless I've missed some other article
by Una which was considerably less temperate in tone, I think you'd
make your points much better if you exaggerated rather less...

David Seal
dseal@armltd.co.uk