Hello!
What do you think about deleting groups in Big8 that aren't being used
for years for normal postings?
That happened in the German de.* hierarchy, I think it will be a good
idea to clean it up. Unused groups are especially nasty for new users
who want to look for groups with traffic.
What do you think about it?
What do you think about deleting groups in Big8 that aren't being used
for years for normal postings?
What do you think about deleting groups in Big8 that aren't being used
for years for normal postings?
That happened in the German de.* hierarchy, I think it will be a good
idea to clean it up.
Unused groups are especially nasty for new users
who want to look for groups with traffic.
Former members of the B8MB suggested that from time to time. It's
useless busy work that does nothing whatsoever to save Usenet.
alt.* and other hierarchies are filled with unused newsgroups.Indeed, the list of the alt.* groups is impressive... I bet only a part
made sense two decades ago) is too large nowadays.
Fewer newsgroups will permit more easily finding the appropriate
newsgroup to post articles to, and prevent people from wasting time in >posting an article for which they will never get any response.
Adam wrote:
. . .
alt.* and other hierarchies are filled with unused newsgroups.
Indeed, the list of the alt.* groups is impressive... I bet only a part
of them are carried by well-administered news servers (the groups with >traffic, or explicitly asked by their users).
Anyway, it is up to each hierarchy (like de.*, uk.*, fr.*, the Big-8...)
to manage their list according to the policy they wish.
There's no obligation for any of them.
Yes, I just read it in "fr.lettres.langue.allemande". It seems
there is no "fr.lettres.langue.misc" that could accept all
messages about any language with no dedicated newsgroup.
I also think that some hierarchies are too deep. "fr.langue.misc"
would suffice instead of "fr.lettres.langue.misc". But it's
better to leave it the way it is now than to reorganize too much!
Any change that occurs now only invalidates the knowledge of those
who know the Usenet now. It could be a relief for hypothetical new
participants, but they simply do not exist.
So any change will only
produce useless conversion effort and mental adjustment effort for
current users. Conversions could also result in older posts from
the disbanded groups becoming inaccessible in some archives.
I will continue to point out that it's pointless busywork. Julien, I do
not agree with you that any good purpose is served by "simplifying" the checkgroups, nor would the user benefit.
There's always the possibility
that someone could try to revive an old newsgroup by, shockingly,
posting on topic, and that somebody else could see the article and post
a followup, also on topic.
Time and time again, we remind News administrators that if a seemingly
unused newsgroup is removed from a News site, then any posting history
and unexpired articles are removed as well. Sometimes users do look for information in very old articles.
Adam H. Kerman wrote:
. . .
Sure. There is also the theoretical possibility that once the WWW has >outlived its usefulness, Facebook will be replaced by a Usenet hierarchy. >Realistically, neither is the case.
Time and time again, we remind News administrators that if a seemingly >>unused newsgroup is removed from a News site, then any posting history
and unexpired articles are removed as well. Sometimes users do look for >>information in very old articles.
Most news servers expire old postings after some month or a year or two.
Nobody will look for an article posted five, ten or fifteen years earlier
on a news server; they'll use their local spool, a local archive or a web >archive for that.
(And if someone would search postings from 2010 or 2005, the server won't >have them, or they'll be buriend under mountains of spam and other noise.)
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