[USENET] - Time for "comp.lang.ruby.announce" ?

I

Ilias Lazaridis

I've noticed a high ammount of announcements ("[ANN]") on this group.

Possibly it's time to create an "comp.lang.ruby.announce" usenet group.

Is someone familar with the process of creating new usenet groups?

..
 
F

Francis Hwang

Personally, I'd be fine if we _didn't_ have a separate announce group.
I like seeing the announcements as part of the stream, and they often
provoke good discussions.

But then, I think the whole idea of splitting off Usenet groups into
mutually exclusive groups is a sort of old-school,
hierarchical-division maneuver whose need is obviated by good clients &
search interfaces: Google groups, any auto-threading newsgroup or
mailing list client, etc., etc.

I've noticed a high ammount of announcements ("[ANN]") on this group.

Possibly it's time to create an "comp.lang.ruby.announce" usenet group.

Is someone familar with the process of creating new usenet groups?

..

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/
 
R

Robert McGovern

Personally, I'd be fine if we _didn't_ have a separate announce group.
I like seeing the announcements as part of the stream, and they often
provoke good discussions.

But then, I think the whole idea of splitting off Usenet groups into
mutually exclusive groups is a sort of old-school,
hierarchical-division maneuver whose need is obviated by good clients &
search interfaces: Google groups, any auto-threading newsgroup or
mailing list client, etc., etc.

+1
 
F

Francis Hwang

+1, but a newsgroup (or Gmane mirror) of all messages matching
/^\[ANN\]/
could be rather useful to some (busy) people, though. Still, they
could read RWN as well.

I think this is the sort of thing that PubSub is good for. I just made
an Atom feed for this, in a week or two I'll try to report on how it
goes. PubSub's worked pretty well for me so far.

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/
 
R

Ryan Davis

I've noticed a high ammount of announcements ("[ANN]") on this group.
Possibly it's time to create an "comp.lang.ruby.announce" usenet group.
Is someone familar with the process of creating new usenet groups?

As much as I hate to agree with this guy, I'd love to have this list
broken up even just a little. comp.lang.ruby.announce and its email
list equivalent would make me very very happy.

P.S. I brought up this discussion in 2002-10-02 when I thought there
was far too much traffic already (ha!). I'd even downloaded and
analyzed all the traffic on the list and could show the growth rate. I
got shot down horribly. Now it is much worse. :/
 
B

Bill Kelly

From: "Ryan Davis said:
I've noticed a high ammount of announcements ("[ANN]") on this group.
Possibly it's time to create an "comp.lang.ruby.announce" usenet group.
Is someone familar with the process of creating new usenet groups?

As much as I hate to agree with this guy, I'd love to have this list
broken up even just a little. comp.lang.ruby.announce and its email
list equivalent would make me very very happy.

P.S. I brought up this discussion in 2002-10-02 when I thought there
was far too much traffic already (ha!). I'd even downloaded and
analyzed all the traffic on the list and could show the growth rate. I
got shot down horribly. Now it is much worse. :/

Just FWIW, I counted up [ANN] headers (omitting Re:plies)
from March 1,
http://www.ruby-talk.org/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/132643
through the start of this [USENET] thread on March 30,
http://www.ruby-talk.org/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/135806

The count I got was 72 [ANN]ouncements. (i dunno if that's
exact but should be nearly correct.)

Which rounds to 2.3% of the list volume during that time.

I dunno if that's high or not. Just posting for
informational purposes.


Regards,

Bill
 
I

Ilias Lazaridis

Ilias said:
I've noticed a high ammount of announcements ("[ANN]") on this group.

Possibly it's time to create an "comp.lang.ruby.announce" usenet group.

Is someone familar with the process of creating new usenet groups?

I've read in some answers wonderfull acronymes and processes of how to
split traffic.

If you can master this, than you can master to merge groups together
into one stream, too (and to split it then again based on you own rulesets).

-

But there are newcomers.

Usenet is simple for newcomers, very simple to read via newsreaders,
very liberal due to the distribution/archival mechanisms.

-

And there are professionals:

"announce" is a group which is commonly used within comp.lang.

It is something like an "prestige-object", too - only languages with
enouth traffic can create this seperate _usenet_ group (and fill it with
traffic).

"announce" is an activity index: simply read it to get an overview of
market and the community activity.

So, please rethink once more if its really neccessary to insist on usage
of tools - instead of simply using the usenet.

[btw: gmane has several disadvantages and can in no way be compared with
usenet]

..
 
G

gabriele renzi

Bill Kelly ha scritto:
Just FWIW, I counted up [ANN] headers (omitting Re:plies)
from March 1,
http://www.ruby-talk.org/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/132643
through the start of this [USENET] thread on March 30,
http://www.ruby-talk.org/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/135806

The count I got was 72 [ANN]ouncements. (i dunno if that's
exact but should be nearly correct.)

Which rounds to 2.3% of the list volume during that time.

I dunno if that's high or not. Just posting for
informational purposes.

to me it is a little thing which is almost unvaluable. If the split
happens, I think that there would be better lines of splitting (i.e.
nuby/pros, web/nonweb, and others)
 
M

Martin Ankerl

It is something like an "prestige-object", too - only languages with
enouth traffic can create this seperate _usenet_ group (and fill it with
traffic).

I strongly dissagree to make any decision based on prestige. Either do
something because it makes sense, or dont do it.

For me the [ANN] announcements in this newsgroup is perfectly ok, it is
nice to have one central point where all the good discussion is going
on. I vote for keeping it as is.

martinus
 
I

Ilias Lazaridis

Martin said:
I strongly dissagree to make any decision based on prestige. Either do
something because it makes sense, or dont do it.

Prestige is a nice side-effect.

Of course it makes sense - this is how usenet works.
For me the [ANN] announcements in this newsgroup is perfectly ok, it is
nice to have one central point where all the good discussion is going
on.

It is one thing to be an (non-standard conformin) special language.

It is another thing to have standard conforming resources.
I vote for keeping it as is.

there is nothing to vote yet.

If someone starts the process (which does not look so), an public vote
will take place, where you can vote against.

-

[sidenote: this topic is not my main intrest. I've just noticed the high
announce traffic - which simply looks amateurish when posted on the
central usenet-group. I for myself will simply filter out the traffic.]
..
 
A

Austin Ziegler

Usenet is simple for newcomers, very simple to read via
newsreaders, very liberal due to the distribution/archival
mechanisms.

You know, I haven't been on a Usenet newsgroup in two years. I'm
sure they're quite still busy, but they've completely fallen off my
radar. I'll search Google Groups for answers sometimes, but IMO,
there's little value in Usenet newsgroups anymore. (BTW, to
forestall any questions -- I first used Usenet in 1989. I know my
way around Usenet.)

That said, given that I use GMail, I see neither value nor non-value
in having a ruby-announce list that could be mirrored to an announce
newsgroup -- except that people are used to seeing announcements in
ruby-talk. They have, from time to time, generated interesting
discussion. Given that a ruby-announce list would be unlikely to be
read by everyone who reads ruby-talk, and that discussion on
ruby-announce would have to be severely limited (possibly through
moderation -- which means you need a volunteer), then there are
issues to be resolved with this.

-austin
 
A

Austin Ziegler

[sidenote: this topic is not my main intrest. I've just noticed
the high announce traffic - which simply looks amateurish when
posted on the central usenet-group. I for myself will simply
filter out the traffic.]

Aha. There's the problem.

I would suspect that more than half of the people whom you see
posting aren't posting to a Usenet newsgroup.

We're posting to a mailing list.

If you're going to judge "amateurish" and "pro" based on the threads
in a newsgroup or a mailing list, then there are other problems at
hand, and it's not with the presence or absence of certain
discussion threads.

-austin
 
I

Ilias Lazaridis

Austin said:
[sidenote: this topic is not my main intrest. I've just noticed
the high announce traffic - which simply looks amateurish when
posted on the central usenet-group. I for myself will simply
filter out the traffic.]

Aha. There's the problem.

of course.

non-channelized traffic is my problem.
I would suspect that more than half of the people whom you see
posting aren't posting to a Usenet newsgroup.

We're posting to a mailing list.

ok, but you understand that is not relevant where the traffic comes from.

It remains annoying.
If you're going to judge "amateurish" and "pro" based on the threads
in a newsgroup or a mailing list, then there are other problems at
hand, and it's not with the presence or absence of certain
discussion threads.

-austin

The ruby group with all it's (at least correctly tagged) "[ANN]" and
(for my bad luck untagged) "ADVOCACY" threads ("hey, ruby is mentioned
here and there" etc.) is amateurish, compared to python, perl, tcl, php.

-

I would like to see an unmoderated comp.lang.ruby.announce - which is
(in contrarity to other groups) free for discussion of the announced stuff.

Basicly, an announce group could be used for advocacy subjects, too
(tagged with e.g. ADVOCACY).

-

But for now, I'm happy with my filters.

..
 
J

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Ilias Lazaridis wrote:
| I've noticed a high ammount of announcements ("[ANN]") on this group.

According to a quick statistics 1.5% of all messages are announcements.
The total number I found in my archive is 650 - given a total of about
50_000 messages. Could it be that you are confusing messages with
"[ANN]" in their subject and actual announcements? If an announcement
group exists, answers are directed to some discussion group by virtue of
"Followup-To:" so most of the messages concerning announcements will
still go to comp.lang.ruby.

Using Mozilla Thunderbird it is quite easy to extract all correctly
attributed announcements:

File -> New -> Saved Search...
Name: ruby-talk-ann
[x] Match all of the following
Subject begins with [ANN]
To or cc contains ruby-talk

voilà ruby-talk-ann

Unfortunately this still is not available for newsgroups although I am
running bleeding[1] edge Mozilla Thunderbird version 1.0.2 (20050317).

| Possibly it's time to create an "comp.lang.ruby.announce" usenet
| group. Is someone familar with the process of creating new usenet
| groups?

There is no 'process of creating new usenet groups'. There are different
processes depending on the hierarchy. IIRC the comp.* process quite
challenging that requires to *proof* the need.

Not very pragmatic.

[1] The 'bleeding' is no joke: This version still does not access an
IMAP server running on *localhost* when in offline-mode and is terribly
slow with my dovecot IMAP server (mutt accessing the same server is
faster by two orders of magnitude). I am considering to switch back to
Mew or migrate to Wanderlust.

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt
- --
Wie Angehörige einer Glaubensgemeinschaft, deren Gründer sich zur
Rettung der Menschheit ans Kreuz hat schlagen lassen, ernsthaft auf die
Idee kommen, Organspenden seien mit ihrem Glauben nicht vereinbar, wird
mir ein ewiges Rätsel bleiben.
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCTZkJrhv7B2zGV08RAsr2AKDgn8QKF5Xs3nfvVpyIS9Pd7Ifl8QCg4eKt
k7SOFtYiHaFio0djNSs/Kag=
=F4CF
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
 
I

Ilias Lazaridis

Ilias said:
I've noticed a high ammount of announcements ("[ANN]") on this group.

Possibly it's time to create an "comp.lang.ruby.announce" usenet group.

Is someone familar with the process of creating new usenet groups?

[from several answers in this thread]

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/creating-newsgroups/part1/

and: announce groups need moderation.

-

thus:

comp.lang.ruby.advocacy

(which would contain announcements, too - having this way the ability to
discuss the announcements)

..
 
C

Csaba Henk

You know, I haven't been on a Usenet newsgroup in two years. I'm
sure they're quite still busy, but they've completely fallen off my
radar. I'll search Google Groups for answers sometimes, but IMO,
there's little value in Usenet newsgroups anymore. (BTW, to
forestall any questions -- I first used Usenet in 1989. I know my
way around Usenet.)

In fact, there is no longer usenet as such.

There is some sort of communication on certain topics which appears in
many faces.

comp.lang.ruby and c.l.r in google groups and ruby-talk are interfaces
to the same abstract entity. Interfaces with different protocols.

It's better to speak of nttp interface. I personally find it much more
concise and convenient than anything else on earth. It so logical to
download only the headers with metainformation, and the actual messages
get pulled just in time. Not a ton of clutter like with a mailing list.
And you get pure content, its not crippled with rigid appearance like
web-based interfaces.

Long live nntp.

Csaba
 
F

Francis Hwang

Follow up on this thread:

You can get an RSS or Atom feed giving you all ruby-talk postings with
the string "ANN" in the subject. Here are the URIs:

RSS: http://rss.pubsub.com/c5/8f/03b5613365c380d18227f3fbc2.xml
Atom: http://atom.pubsub.com/c5/8f/03b5613365c380d18227f3fbc2.xml

I made these by going to http://www.pubsub.com, and creating a search
with the string "GROUP:comp.lang.ruby and TITLE:ANN".




+1, but a newsgroup (or Gmane mirror) of all messages matching
/^\[ANN\]/
could be rather useful to some (busy) people, though. Still, they
could read RWN as well.

I think this is the sort of thing that PubSub is good for. I just made
an Atom feed for this, in a week or two I'll try to report on how it
goes. PubSub's worked pretty well for me so far.

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/
 

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