🚀 go-pugleaf

You make some interesting points, and I concur with some of them.
However, there are some points that seem over-generalized.

>- You can't "make" people read news in the same way you
>  can do with mail ... too much fluff in most newsgroups,
>  vs. most organizations using mail having reduced fluff
>  of necessity.  

I think nearly everyone would agree that there's too much fluff in the
public newsgroups, but I don't see any reason why that would necessarily
be true in newsgroups instituted within a particular organization.
Various mechanisms could be brought to bear in a closed environment
that cannot be used on the public nets:
    -	make all newsgroups be moderated
    -	install filters everywhere that limit who can post
    -	install kill files everywhere that limit what can be posted
    -	organizational pressure can be brought to bear on those who
	post too much fluff
I mean, most of us would consider these pretty draconian, but then,
most corporations are pretty draconian almost by definition.

>- Being a broadcast medium, news is to some degree less
>  secure.  Information that would comfortably go to one or
>  more workgroups by email would seem more prone to going
>  astray over news ... e.g. orgchrarts to head hunters,
>  plans of one group to another (yeech, politics!), and
>  a variety of suchlike restricted data.

I don't know as it's the mere fact of being a broadcast medium
as the implementation of that broadcast medium.  Why is mail more
secure?  Again, measures can be taken: e.g. cut off the corporate 
net from Worldnet.  Unless the corporate net is isolated, it's
certainly possible that an employee will forward not only mail
but news articles -- via mail.  It's easy enough to ensure that
in-house news doesn't escape to the outside world -- just manage
the gateway node(s) -- control over transmission resides with
the transmitting node.

It's not too hard to imagine that some bozo might post an in-house
org chart (say) to (say) comp.sources.x, but that can happen whether
or not 'news' is used for internal communications or not.

On the other hand, it's not too hard to imagine some sort of front-end
software that implements the corporate work environment and just uses
'news' as a distribution medium.  As such, it wouldn't be too hard
to build into that software the controls that would make it impossible
to post work-related information to the outside world.  

>- Again related to being broadcast, there are some parts of
>  the work life that people feel uncomfortable broadcasting.
>  People feel very different about admitting ignorance (e.g.
>  by asking a question) to various groups.  Some people feel
>  uncomfortable asking questions of anonymous strangers, some
>  people feel uncomfortable asking them from people they know!
>  (E.g. I know folk who just can't post to USENET.)

I think this is a *terrific* point!
Using 'news' as an integral part of the workplace and workday will
work only to the extent that it reflects what that organization
and its members are already willing to do.
If people are already expected to admit ignorance, and solicit 
knowledge from co-workers, then that expectation can be mapped onto
a news-based workplace.  Of course, if the expectation is already
unrealistic, it won't work any better (or worse) once this mapping
has been done.  

Some careful planning of newsgroups and distribution regions
should be done.  It almost certainly will not work to make all
in-house newsgroups have a distribution of 'company-wide'.
I confess I haven't a clue how the news software implements the
concept of 'distribution', but apparently it's possible for each
machine to consider itself as part of one or more regions, or not.
E.g. there is 'worldwide', 'usa', and 'ne' (for New England).
Presumably the same mechanism could be used to limit distribution
of various newsgroups to just those machines that belong to the
affected groups.

Returning to your point about comfort levels with various sorts
and scopes of communication, there is a software product whose whole
underlying philosophy is that the software must reflect these needs
in both the groups and in the individuals.  That is, the communication
channels implemented in software must reflect the communication channels
that people already use, and the communication paths that go along
with various organizational structures.  So, some channels should be
one-to-one, some one-to-many, some many-to-many;  in a different
dimension, some should be open to all, some should be by invitation only;
provision for anonymity should exist.  This product is called "Participate",
and I heartily recommend it.  The main drawback to it at the present time
is that it is not 'distributed' -- the message base and the user interface
must all reside on a single machine.  That restriction aside, it's quite
possible to use Participate to reflect all manner of traditional and
nontraditional organizations and their communication paths -- interoffice
mail, restricted distribution lists, democracies, newsgroups,
newsletters, hierarchies, suggestion boxes.  Communication can be
completely freewheeling or rigidly controlled, or anything in between.

N.B.	Neither I nor my employer am a representative of this product,
	nor have any stake in it.  I just happen to know a good deal
	about it and like it.

-- Kenn Goutal
   Technical Support

Interbase Software Corporation
209 Burlington Road
Bedford  MA  01730
617.275.3222
...!uunet!intrbas!kenn