Subject:
|
Re: Newsgroup structure: some tough decisions
|
Newsgroups:
|
lugnet.admin.nntp
|
Date:
|
Mon, 5 Mar 2001 17:59:53 GMT
|
Viewed:
|
1454 times
|
| |
|
|
Ok, some initial thoughts....
I was opposed to a .rant type group earlier, I now see that it could be
valuable. One question though is how to get the ranting to move there. I
don't think we can eliminate initial rants in response to an
announcement, but perhaps that needs to be done.
I think two .rave groups might be usefull:
lugnet.lego.rave - to rave about things TLC is doing which we want to
encourage them to do more of, or just complement them on
lugnet.build.rave - to rave about someone's MOC. This would allow
redirection of some of the "ooh, that's cool" messages out of the theme
groups, and provide the side benefit that if you just want to see the
MOCs that have sparked peoples attentions, you can just browse this
group.
One thought for the market groups:
lugnet.market.ebay
lugnet.market.brickbay
lugnet.market.lego-direct
lugnet.market.retail
lugnet.market.swap
lugnet.market.swap.updates
The idea of the first two is to place all (or at least most) of the
posts relating to those venues in one place. Those two venues are
singularly popular venues, and have good search tools, so many people
may not really care to read about announcements of things there, but on
the other hand, someone who just wants to browse what's available from a
large venue like that can easily do so (for example, I personally don't
deal with any of the other auction sites, there's so much on eBay, and
there are some really good regular sellers which provide a lot of
confidence).
lugnet.market.lego-direct would be the place to talk about shop at home
deals, web store deals, etc. From the volume of traffic, I think this
group would eliminate the need for the separate announce group, and
would make it more likely that when the folks who have permission to
post to announce.lsah are busy, that someone else will post the weekly
specials in an easy to find place. Presumably folks would also report
things like: "I just placed an order at S@H and by the way, the new
super cool train set is now in stock!" here.
The idea of retail is to replace shopping with something which more
clearly points to channels for buying that one could easily find, and
that one would expect a deal found there to be available for some time.
Posting of storewide sales, web deals, etc. It could also stay as
lugnet.market.shopping.
lugnet.market.swap would be the place for all those one off deals. Buy,
sell, trade, and auction announcements would all be welcome, but note
that I suggest lugnet.market.swap.updates to keep the daily updates of
auction updates and "well, this is what's left of my list" in. On the
other hand, such traffic is now low enough that it probably doesn't
matter. Most of the non-eBay auctions being run now are simple "best
offer by Friday" type deals, I don't think there are even many any more
which post the current best offers.
It might be worth adding a separate lugnet.market.wanted where people
could list the items they are specifically looking for, and then folks
can respond with offers to sell or trade (prefferably by private e-mail
to the person) or even post "hey, call the TRU in Smithfield, they have
at least a hundred of those on the shelf" which might be a public
posting (since almost assuredly there are other folks looking for the
same thing).
I'd also like to see very clear rules about what kinds of market traffic
are allowed outside the market groups. I think most such traffic should
be allowed in the loc and org groups if it is either announcements of
stock at specific local retail outlets, or deals where someone doesn't
want to deal with shipping (for example, recently Thomas Main offered a
bunch of sets to me, not all of which I wanted, and he clearly wanted to
not deal with 20 people each wanting a set or two. I offered the rest of
the sets [I was interested in about 2/3 of the list] to other local
folks with the idea that Thomas would get the sets to me, and then I
could meet up with folks individually to distribute them). If someone
wants to run a little auction locally, why not. I don't think the
volumes of this traffic will be high. Of course for the org groups, the
organization should be able to specify if such traffic is NOT welcome.
Also, if a significant number of folks want the market traffic out of
the main loc group, it would probably be best to allow
lugnet.loc.xyz.market groups to be requested.
I think incidental mentions of market deals should be allowed in the
other groups, but it would be nice to clarify this. Things that I think
should definitely be allowed is for someone other than the seller to
post a reference to any online deal (like an eBay post) in order to
raise questions about the item being sold. I think it would be ok for
the seller to do so if they are responding to a direct querry. I think
that a certain amount of discussion of the kits being produced by AFOLs
is also reasonable. Larry and the other folks offering train kits for
sale are definitely doing good things for the train community. On the
other hand, Larry's posts do come off a bit as a flog, so perhaps we can
explore how Larry could make those less offensive to folks. I don't want
to see Larry not be permitted to respond when someone asks, "Hey, what
trolley creations are out there." He should be able to say, well, take a
look at my PCC and mention that not only does he think that it's a cool
model, that if you really like it, you can even buy one from him.
As far as debates go, I'm not sure we need lugnet.debate. I think that
the Bionicle debate was moved to .debate because it wanted to be open to
the larger issue of toys promoting violence. I think also that such
discussion does't belong in the themed or other regular groups either,
even if it is purely about whether TLC should depict violence or not.
As far as loc groups go, I hope you will take each region on a case by
case basis. For North Carolina, I see no reason currently for anything
other than lugnet.loc.us.nc. When things do get broken down a bit more,
lugnet.loc.us.nc.rtp should be created, until we have a hundred fans in
the Triangle, we just don't need separate groups for Raleigh and Durham
(and note that of the currently even remotely active folks, only one of
us actually lives in Raleigh or Durham, we have: Boone: 1, Greensboro:
2, Chapel Hill: 1, Cary: 2, Raleigh: 1, Wilson: 1 [do I have that right
Will <Hess>?]: 1).
As far as world wide participation, I wouldn't be surprised if for
English speaking countries, the percentages of AFOLs who participate in
Lugnet is fairly consistent (though possibly slightly less due to
Lugnet's US bias). Outside of English speaking countries, I suspect
participation could be much lower due to Lugnet's bias towards English.
I certainly not an economics guru, but I think the economic climate is
the US is FAR more suited to people having LEGO as a hobby. I would even
hazzard that the "free spirit" nature of the US makes us more likely to
play with and create with LEGO (if you really want to explore this, it's
probably a topic for .debate).
As far as orgs go, I think given the limitation of a tree with no loops
or cross references which nntp imposes, that the current arrangement is
the best that can be done. I think the one misteak is having
lugnet.trains.org.wamaltc. I think lugnet.theme.org is usefull as a
place to tie organizational stuff to the themes (as lugnet.org is useful
to talk about organizations in general). I think lugnet.castle.org.cw is
well placed, it's really just a place for focused castle discussion,
discussion focused on interconnected storylines. Having the org
hierarchy separate from the loc hierarchy makes it clear that
organizations need not be constrained by arbitrary boundaries set up for
political reasons (or for Todd's reasons wrto how regions within states
are grouped). If nntp supported a web hierarchy, we would put the
organizations under both org, loc, and possibly also themed areas, and
organizations which spanned large areas would be tied to multiple loc
groups.
In some of the areas, if new groups are created and old ones closed, it
may be worth folks perusing the closed groups and seeing if anything
should be carried over to the new groups. I hope the old groups will
stay available to nntp for read only (it would be worth the server
re-writing posts before sending them to set "follow-ups" to the most
appropriate group in general - for example, if the lugnet.loc.us.nc.city
groups are closed, follow-ups should go to lugnet.loc.us.nc).
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
|
|
Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Newsgroup structure: some tough decisions
|
| (...) Oh, I don't think there would be a problem with that! :-) (...) Why and how? If the group didn't allow follow-ups from other areas, then people would just get around it by posting their follow-up rant in another area, defeating the purpose. Or (...) (24 years ago, 5-Mar-01, to lugnet.admin.nntp)
| | | Re: Newsgroup structure: some tough decisions
|
| (...) I really like the idea of adding .ebay, .brickbay, and .lego-direct (but call it .shop-at-home or .lsahs) categories. However instead of .swap and .swap.updates I would suggest .barter, .forsale, and .wanted. --Bill. (24 years ago, 10-Mar-01, to lugnet.admin.nntp)
|
Message is in Reply To:
| | Newsgroup structure: some tough decisions
|
| I'd like to kick off a discussion about the current state of the newsgroup structure here -- missing groups, unnecessary, groups, annoyingly or confusingly named groups, etc. The goal of this discussion is to come away with a list of practical (...) (24 years ago, 5-Mar-01, to lugnet.admin.nntp, lugnet.admin.terms, lugnet.announce, lugnet.org, lugnet.market.auction, lugnet.market.buy-sell-trade, lugnet.loc.us, lugnet.loc.uk, lugnet.off-topic.debate) !!
|
101 Messages in This Thread:
(Inline display suppressed due to large size. Click Dots below to view.)
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
This Message and its Replies on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
