Subject:
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Re: Newsgroup structure: some tough decisions
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.nntp
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Date:
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Tue, 6 Mar 2001 04:07:01 GMT
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Viewed:
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1335 times
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Interesting ideas. I look forward to the changes coming to Lugnet. Being
serious, I think the Rant newsgroup should be .racers. Or something else
that clearly implies the rant and upset-at-Lego sentiments immediately.
Just a suggestion that likely won't be taken seriously:)
In lugnet.admin.nntp, Todd Lehman writes:
> 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
> improvements. Ideally, any changes would also make it easier to explain
> things in the TOS/T&C, and even better, would alleviate need for certain
> things to be explained in the first place (because they'd hopefully be so
> obvious).
>
> The most important things for discussion here are the .market, .loc, and
> org area, so I'll start with the less important stuff and come back to
> those.
>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
> First, I really think we need a .rant group somewhere. There's a lot of
> ranting/kvetching that goes on (naturally), and it isn't exactly "welcomed"
> in any group. Not to imply that I'm exactly in favor of _encouraging_
> rants, but I know what it can be like to post a rant in a more or less
> positive group and have it met with oh-don't-be-a-party-pooper and that sort
> of thing. I've had it happen to me, and I've seen it happen to others too
> many times for comfort.
>
> We need a place where rants _aren't_ frowned upon -- where ranting is
> expected -- but not necessarily goaded-on. The question in my mind is what
> to name it and where to put it.
>
> I'd especially love to see a _pair_ of groups -- .rant and .rave -- the
> former being for letting off steam and the latter being for posting praise.
> And you wouldn't be allowed to post praise in .rant or to post a rant in
> rave :)
>
> We really don't have any kind of rave-oriented group, which really can make
> it seem lately (with all the 2000/2001 disappointments) that LEGO just
> doesn't get any nice things said to or about it anymore. lugnet.dear-lego
> isn't quite the place since it's not really a discussion group (it's for
> open letters) and it covers the full spectrum from the ugly to the pretty.
> A .rave group would pretty much have as its charter that it's for saying
> rosy, enthusiastic things only. I like what Merriam Webster has as its
> second definition of rave as noun: "an extravagantly favorable criticism."
>
> Next, I wonder if there should be a lugnet.debate group (meaning for LEGO-
> related debates). It irks me to no end to see LEGO-related discussions
> (such as whether or not Bionicle is violence) occurring in lugnet.off-topic
> .debate, which is specifically for non-LEGO topics. It seems that people
> drift there naturally for some reason when they feel they're getting into a
> debate, and that's bad. I'd rather such a debate took place in lugnet
> .technic.bionicle where it's already 100% on-topic, but I guess someone
> moved it out of that group at some point (why?). Anyway, if we had a
> lugnet.debate group, I certainly would think that LEGO-related debates would
> drift there instead.
>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
> What should we do about the mess that's caused by having .market.auction
> separate from .market.buy-sell-trade and more recently the mess that's
> caused by a lack of clarity in the T&C (Discussion Group Terms & Conditions)
> regarding flogs in themed groups?
>
> When these LUGNET newsgroups were formed, eBay was still a relatively small
> thing, and also at the time, RTL was still frequented mainly by people who
> wanted to talk about LEGO rather than sell it. Going back even further to
> 1994, online LEGO auctions were still frowned upon by many, and in 1993
> weren't even heard of yet. Over the past 6-7 years, due mainly I suppose
> to eBay, auctions have become a normal part of life, a normal way of
> selling, and eBay is now a household word. Also, the people I remember from
> the early days of RTL who were staunchly against auctions seem to have all
> but disappeared from the AFOL scene. Many who accepted them begrudgingly
> are still around.
>
> I don't think it can still be true that auctions are frowned upon in the
> same way that they once were, and I'm challenging the notion that they
> necessarily need to be separated from straight sales.
>
> We know that it causes problems to try to separate auctions from straight
> sales -- for one, because of the difficulty of agreeing on common language
> and, for two, because the line is actually rather blurry when you get down
> and look at it, as many of us have had the opportunity to do over the past
> 30 months here.
>
> There was a thread a couple months ago about possibly reorganizing the
> .market area. I really was serious about that and feel we need to attack
> this again. My current thoughts are along the lines of blowing away the
> two groups .market.auction and .market.buy-sell-trade, and creating in
> their place the three groups .market.forsale, .market.wanted, and
> .market.swap.
>
> I'd also like to modify the Terms of Use Agreement (specifically in the
> Discussion Group Terms and Conditions area) to be much more clear on flogs.
>
> If we can rearrange the .market area so as to render the issue of "what is
> and is not an auction?" a moot issue, all we have to do is define "what is
> and is not a flog?" and define where it is and isn't appropriate.
>
> We also need to make sure that casual everyday person-to-person or
> person-to-group talk of a commercial nature is still OK in the .loc groups,
> as appropriate, but make sure that explicit flogs are not-OK in other
> groups, especially themed groups.
>
> An example of an OK flog in a .loc group is like, "Hey, I found a bunch of
> stuff on clearance at TRU at such-and-such location and I bought it all and
> is there anyone in the area who wants any of it?" An example of a not-OK
> flog in a .loc group is something that doesn't apply specifically to the
> local area in question -- say, if someone from the U.S. posts an flog about
> their worldwide auction to a group in (for example) the .loc.au or .loc.uk
> area.
>
> It could get tricky to allow auction flogs in .loc groups, as the U.S. is so
> big that someone in the U.S. could post about their U.S.-only auction to
> loc.us, and that would certainly annoy a lot of people. So we'll have to
> draw some lines...and that won't be easy unless they are all simple lines.
>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
> Finally, it's clear that the extreme depth of the .loc hierarchy -- that
> is, going all the way down to cities -- just isn't an attractive thing
> across the board. It has worked out very well in .us because of its sheer
> size and the number of people online, but it fails miserably in, for
> example, .au, .br, .de, .es, .fi, .fr, .it, .nl, .no, .nz, .se, and (last,
> but not least!), .uk.
>
> Sometime in 1999, at the request of the .loc.uk populace, we actually shut
> down some 85 subgroups of .loc.uk, leaving .loc.uk and 6 subgroups .ci, .en,
> .im, .ni, .sc, and .wl, which themselves even haven't been adopted much yet.
>
> So, I'd like to whack ALL of the subgroups of ALL of the countries except
> for .loc.us (which enjoys relatively heavy use) and what remains of .loc.uk
> (or maybe even those too).
>
> This could mean deleting as many as 387 newsgroups.
>
> I'm rather dismayed as to how few AFOLs have come online outside of the
> U.S. since 1998. It's been a lot, to be sure, but I really expected 10
> times as many. I really expected there to be a few hundred in the UK by
> now, for example. That's why the huge up-front planning of all the .loc
> groups down to the major metropolitan regions. Anyway, those guesses were
> totally wrong, and people seem to want to group up in bigger groups anyway.
>
> Apart from the simple practical gains (fewer groups means simpler
> subscriptions) if we proceeded with this, we would also be able to handle
> ad-hoc expansion of .loc areas nicely. What I mean by this is having
> subgroups of .loc areas be for topics in a specific native language. I
> seem to remember that someone in .loc.it once asked for a .robotics
> subgroup where they could talk about robotics in Italian, but I complained
> that the .loc area is for localities and not for topical divisions. If we
> changed this rule and let each country define its own subgroups, free from
> regional distinctions, I think it would be a lot healthier for those local
> communities.
>
> Closely related to this is the question of what to do when a country wants
> its own market group? I don't particularly like the idea of creating
> subgroups in the .market area because they'd be so prone to trigger-happy
> crossposting, and I don't (or rather, didn't) like the idea of creating
> market subgroups in the .loc area because of disrupting the original nature
> of the .loc area, but...if that restriction was relaxed and each .loc.xx
> area could request specific subgroups, then I can't argue with that since
> it has the best chance of giving people what they really want and need.
>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
> Somewhat related to lugnet.loc reorganization is the possibility of
> lugnet.org reorganization. Long ago, for some reason, I created an .org
> subgroup of lugnet.trains. I think this may have been before the
> lugnet.org hierarchy, and it definitely was before all of the other theme
> groups (lugnet.trains and lugnet.starwars were the only theme groups at the
> time...imagine that!).
>
> Anyway, that stuck, and eventually there was also a lugnet.castle.org group
> and lugnet.castle.org.cw group for Castle World.
>
> What I'd like to open up for discussion is whether or not anything "org"
> related should be moved under lugnet.org sooner rather than later, or not
> at all. That is, should lugnet.trains.org be moved to lugnet.org.train (or
> for that matter lugnet.org.ltc)?
>
> As we get more an more new types of organizations popping up (we currently
> have four types, I think -- a bunch train, one castle, one town, and one
> CAD), the more and more they'll become fragmented across the newsgroup
> structure.
>
> I could live with relaxing the original restriction of lugnet.org.xx being
> countries only and say that the xx is either a two-letter country code or
> some other longer prefix like train or castle or cad. I have the
> capability to divide the display of subgroups into horizontal "tiers" so
> that location-based organizations could show up in a separate tier from
> topical-based organizations. (An example of tiers is on the Robotics entry
> page or on the main news homepage.)
>
> One possible "compartmentalized dork" type of nightmare here is what might
> happen if some country wanted to place their LUGs inside of the .loc.xx
> hierarchy instead of the .org.xx hierarchy. I guess we'd have to spell
> that out in the rules for requesting groups. And that makes me kinda
> wonder if it was shortsighted to have created the .org area in the first
> place. That is, if there were no .org area, LUGs would naturally fall into
> the .loc area, if they could.
>
> Well, food for thought. I'd like to get all of this resolved within the
> next couple of weeks. But if there's a lot of good discussion and new
> issues, we could do some of it sooner and some of it later. But no loose
> ends here past the end of March -- that's a hard deadline.
>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
> So, speak your opinions on these:
>
> * Add new group lugnet.rant or lugnet.lego.rant? Why or why not?
>
> * Add new group lugnet.rave or lugnet.lego.rave? Why or why not?
>
> * Add new group lugnet.debate? Why or why not?
>
> * Delete lugnet.market.auction and lugnet.market.buy-sell-trade and replace
> these with lugnet.market.forsale, lugnet.market.wanted, and lugnet.market
> .swap? Why or why not?
>
> * How much and what type of flogging would you like to see in .loc groups?
> None? Some? Anything goes? Only certain types? Why or why not?
>
> * Axe regional subgroups of lugnet.loc.xx and field requests for new
> subgroups on a country-by-country basis -- let them grow organically?
> Why or why not?
>
> * Move lugnet.trains.org to lugnet.org.train/ltc/etc., and move
> lugnet.castle.org to lugnet.org.castle, and move lugnet.cad.dev.org.ldraw
> to lugnet.org.cad.ldraw (or something)? Why or why not?
>
>
> I *especially* would like to hear your opinions if you haven't weighed in on
> any of these issues before.
>
> Thanks,
> --Todd
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Newsgroup structure: some tough decisions
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| 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) !!
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