[This is a revised version of the Final RFD/Last Call for Comments,
to address concerns raised regarding the possibility of future changes
in moderation status. The wording in question has been removed at the
request of the proponent. The posting date for the first Final RFD in
the Change History was also incorrect and has been amended.]
REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
unmoderated group comp.lang.go
[This is a revised version of the Final RFD/Last Call for Comments,
to address concerns raised regarding the possibility of future changes
in moderation status. The wording in question has been removed at the
request of the proponent. The posting date for the first Final RFD in
the Change History was also incorrect and has been amended.]
REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD)
unmoderated group comp.lang.go
This is a formal Request for Discussion (RFD) for the creation of the unmoderated newsgroup comp.lang.go
On Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:17:55 CST
Mima-sama <mi@masa.ma> wrote:
I've been holding this back to see if the proponent and its supporters would actually prove that this newsgroup deserves to be created, but
alas, no. Not even a single post about Golang or its projects in comp.lang.misc.
There does exist
From: Vasco Costa <vasco.costa@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: [GO] Who uses Go and what do you like/dislike about it?
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2022 14:30:08 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server
Message-ID: <t2uplg$k4l$1@gioia.aioe.org>
(or http://al.howardknight.net/?ID=166327300700) and that thread got a few replies. Nothing since then I think.
I've been holding this back to see if the proponent and its supporters
would actually prove that this newsgroup deserves to be created, but
alas, no. Not even a single post about Golang or its projects in comp.lang.misc.
So count me in those who oppose the creation of
comp.lang.go, for the same reason as ahk in news.groups. Nobody is
seriously talking about it which means the topic does not need its own
place in the Big-8 for easier discussion. How can you make discussion
easier if there's no discussion in the first place?
I'm pretty sure you could also somehow use
comp.unix.shell too if the Go program is a command line tool and you
need some help piping it somewhere or integrating it to a shell script.
The point is to spread around multiple relevant newsgroups to see if
someone knowledgeable of the topic you're discussing about can follow
you up.
There does exist
The idea is that the lack of a specific group leads to lack of discussion.
Personally I think that the idea "Build it and perhaps they will come" should be tested every now and again but not too often.
Earlier posts mentioned the
possibility of also creating a comp.lang.rust group soon. I would be opposed to that now because I haven't seen discussion of Rust on various technical newsgroups.
The output of any command line programme written in any language can be piped to a shell script and any programme can be called from a shell script. comp.unix.shell is not for discussion of every programming language under the sun.
Which relevant newsgroups ?
I consider it acceptable to test every now and again the idea that people prefer a specific newsgroup as opposed to a generic one.
And I disagree with that idea. If that's true then how come Usenet has thrived for many years before with users seemingly not minding to post
on broader newsgroups fully knowing that a specific newsgroup is not
ready yet?
It's people's laziness in posting something on-topic and making the
effort to invite their friends to Usenet that leads to lack of
discussion.
I'm opposed to it too, but for the different reason that is that there
exists already one at alt.comp.lang.rust. There's no point in creating a newsgroup in Big-8 for a topic whose home already exists in alt.*, as
pointed out by ahk again in the same article I mentioned by ID.
For example, most people who play one type of Rogue-like game are at least moderately interested in other Rogue-like games, so it was fairly easy to build interest for a new game on rec.games.roguelike.misc and see if it
got critical mass. Or, similarly, most people who were fans of one genre
of comic books at least dipped their toes in other genres of comic books,
so rec.arts.comics.misc worked reasonably well.
On the other hand, despite being interested in programming languages and
even new programming languages, comp.lang.misc has never seemed like a reasonable newsgroup to follow in my time on Usenet.
I would not immediately reject the theory
that a more specific group could get traffic that is never going to show
up on a catch-all group. People's tolerance for searching through random stuff they're not interested in to find a few posts they are interested in varies widely.
I'm not going to do a bunch of work to find topics that are interesting to
me on Usenet, let alone try to start that discussion myself. I'm going to try a little bit, in proportion to how much I think I'm going to get out
of it, and then I'm going to go use some other medium entirely that
requires less effort on my part.
If Usenet wants to stick around in a world in which there are way easier-to-use and less-obscure discussion forums, it's going to need to be
at least a little welcoming. More focused topic groups may or may not be
a way to be more welcoming; I don't know! But it's at least worth considering.
Creating a newsgroup in the Big-8 is a big (heh) deal. You're
essentially signalling to many news servers who gave their trust to the
board that this topic exists and that this topic is regularly being
discussed in Usenet, and that the newsgroup created will have a self-sustaining discussion for many years to come.
If Big-8 keeps breaking the trust of these news admins with this idea of "more welcoming", we're going to see fragmentation and therefore an even worse Usenet than it already is because plenty of news admins decide
that nothing coming out of the board is making sense anymore.
By this rule, we would never have created any Big Eight newsgroups at
all. alt.* predates all of the groups we're discussing on this
newsgroup and, due to the nature of alt.* newsgroup creation, there was
essentially always already an alt.* group.
I mean an alt.* group already exists *with discussion* on it. Sorry for
not making it clear. If an alt.* exists and people are talking there,
there isn't really any point to making a Big-8 to it in the future.
If Usenet wants to stick around in a world in which there are way easier-to-use and less-obscure discussion forums, it's going to need to be
at least a little welcoming. More focused topic groups may or may not be
a way to be more welcoming; I don't know! But it's at least worth considering.
One of the goals of the Big-8 Management Board is to create groups
that are well-used. Proponents may look at other newsgroups, web
sites, mailing lists, or forums to present evidence that many people
are interested in the topic. "Traffic Analysis" is a catch-all title
for evidence that supports the conclusion that the topic is popular
and that there is therefore some likelihood that the group will be
well-used.
**It is in the best interests of the proposed group** to get as many
people as possible interested in the proposal during the discussion of
the RFD. The requirement that *prospective supporters show themselves
to be familiar with Usenet* means that the new group may have a good
nucleus of posters if and when it is created. A newsgroup with no news
is no fun. The more people whom proponents persuade to show support
for the proposal by making Usenet posts during the discussion, *the
better it is for the newsgroup itself* if and when it is created. A
proponent may not simply assume that the creation of a newsgroup will
attract traffic from existing alternatives to Usenet.
By this rule, we would never have created any Big Eight newsgroups at all. alt.* predates all of the groups we're discussing on this newsgroup and,
due to the nature of alt.* newsgroup creation, there was essentially
always already an alt.* group.
We decided in fr.* to be more agile and flexible about newsgroup
creations (and removals). Let's give it a real try!
On the other hand, despite being interested in programming languages and
even new programming languages, comp.lang.misc has never seemed like a reasonable newsgroup to follow in my time on Usenet. The scope is just
way too broad for me and turns into a weird grab bag of miscellaneous
stuff, 95% of which is irrelevant to anything I'm interested in. It's the same reason why I read rec.arts.sf.written back in the day but have zero interest in reading rec.arts.books, whose topic scope is in theory the entirety of written human knowledge and entertainment.
This is all in response to your comment about what Usenet was like when it was thriving. It's a way different place now, so I don't know if that
older experience applies. But I would not immediately reject the theory
that a more specific group could get traffic that is never going to show
up on a catch-all group. People's tolerance for searching through random stuff they're not interested in to find a few posts they are interested in varies widely.
Mima-sama <mi@masa.ma> writes:
I think you're worried about some sort of slippery slope problem, but I've been watching this discussion about this group slowly creep along for...
a really long time now.
Maybe there's some slippery slope towards
excessive newsgroup creation, but you couldn't see it from this process
with a telescope.
I mean an alt.* group already exists *with discussion* on it. Sorry for
not making it clear. If an alt.* exists and people are talking there,
there isn't really any point to making a Big-8 to it in the future.
Once again, this is a very old argument that has been roundly rejected throughout the entire history of the Big-8. Maybe you think we've always been wrong to reject that argument! But we've created groups that
duplicate trafficed alt.* groups for the entire time I've been involved in Usenet newsgroup creation. A few people would always complain about it,
but it was never considered a reason not to proceed.
Mima-sama <mi@masa.ma> writes:
And I disagree with that idea. If that's true then how come Usenet has thrived for many years before with users seemingly not minding to post
on broader newsgroups fully knowing that a specific newsgroup is not
ready yet?
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The amount of crossover of interest is a major factor.
On the other hand, despite being interested in programming languages and
even new programming languages, comp.lang.misc has never seemed like a reasonable newsgroup to follow in my time on Usenet. The scope is just
way too broad for me and turns into a weird grab bag of miscellaneous
stuff, 95% of which is irrelevant to anything I'm interested in.
This is all in response to your comment about what Usenet was like when it was thriving. It's a way different place now, so I don't know if that
older experience applies. But I would not immediately reject the theory
that a more specific group could get traffic that is never going to show
up on a catch-all group. People's tolerance for searching through random stuff they're not interested in to find a few posts they are interested in varies widely.
It's people's laziness in posting something on-topic and making the
effort to invite their friends to Usenet that leads to lack of
discussion.
I'm not sure it's a very useful statement to make that some method of newsgroup organization would work if people weren't lazy. Posting to and reading Usenet isn't a job. No one is under any obligation to do work.
Of course people are lazy about their casual entertainment!
I'm not going to do a bunch of work to find topics that are interesting to
me on Usenet, let alone try to start that discussion myself. I'm going to try a little bit, in proportion to how much I think I'm going to get out
of it, and then I'm going to go use some other medium entirely that
requires less effort on my part.
If Usenet wants to stick around in a world in which there are way easier-to-use and less-obscure discussion forums, it's going to need to be
at least a little welcoming. More focused topic groups may or may not be
a way to be more welcoming; I don't know! But it's at least worth considering.
On 9/27/2023 23:22, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
It's people's laziness in posting something on-topic and making the
effort to invite their friends to Usenet that leads to lack of
discussion. The "lack of a specific group" is just an excuse as proven
by the many unused specific newsgroups in Big-8 waiting to be posted on.
Personally I think that the idea "Build it and perhaps they will come" should
be tested every now and again but not too often.
It has already been tested many times in the past, as ahk said
news.groups (<ueomm5$18gkb$1@dont-email.me>). They failed.
Now you might say "but what about comp.infosystems.gemini". But I argue
it's an exception to the rule. (And it seems it couldn't keep up with
the 10 posts/day guideline over 90 days anyway which is used to gauge
whether a topic's discussion is self-sufficient enough to be split off
into its own newsgroup.)
Earlier posts mentioned the
possibility of also creating a comp.lang.rust group soon. I would be opposed to that now because I haven't seen discussion of Rust on various technical newsgroups.
I'm opposed to it too, but for the different reason that is that there
exists already one at alt.comp.lang.rust. There's no point in creating a newsgroup in Big-8 for a topic whose home already exists in alt.*, as
pointed out by ahk again in the same article I mentioned by ID.
The output of any command line programme written in any language can be piped
to a shell script and any programme can be called from a shell script. comp.unix.shell is not for discussion of every programming language under the sun.
I'm not saying every CLI program written in Go should go there. It's
just an idea that can be a valid option to take in some cases if you use
a bit of creativity. For example, what if there's a Go program a user is dependent on but is badly designed that it's errors are outputting to
stdout instead of stderr for some reason? User has little knowledge
about Go but is comfortable with modifying the source code with help
from someone more experienced in Golang and shell. comp.unix.shell would
be perfectly fine to (cross)post to for that scenario.
Or what about if a user is looking for a CLI HTML parser written
specifically in Go, so they could use it with their shell script? Again, perfectly fine to (cross)post to comp.unix.shell.
Which relevant newsgroups ?
Idk, do a keyword search of "program" in your client? There's no way you can't find a single one that can be related to programming in Go. You're developing a game written in Go? Post to alt.games.programming! Need
help porting a Golang program to Plan 9? Crosspost to comp.os.plan9!
What's the motivation for duplicating under big-8 an alt.* group with on topic discussion ?
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