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Boy, was I surprised to see the post tonight that Chet C. made to .announce
about the TLG press release. It's ironic because I had just been talking
with Jason S. earlier today about how the .announce group had drifted away
from its original dual purpose in life. (Jason pointed out that .announce
wasn't being used for reporting general news but instead mainly for personal
announcements. I rooted around through the posts a bit and realized, "Oh my
gosh, you're absolutely right." And I began to wonder how the hole in
announce materialized over time and what we can do to patch it up.)
Chet's message was absolutely on-target with the charter of .announce, which
begins like this:
General-interest announcements to the community (breaking news about
products, releases, contests, events, and sites, etc.); ...
yet people aren't happening to use it for "breaking news" (or much of any
kind of news, for that matter) very often. Scanning the subject lines, here
are the very few posts which do stand out in my mind as "news" in the
traditional sense:
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=297
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=281
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=278
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=276
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=214
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=143
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=141
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=121
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=120
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=117
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=116
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=104
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=93
http://www.lugnet.com/announce/?n=75
What's really odd is that it seems the farther back in time things go, the
more "newsy" things were in .announce -- with a gradual change going forward
into more and more "announcey" things. (Everything in .announce prior to
13 Oct 98, BTW, is mostly noise because the Followup-To field wasn't
required originally in messages posted there, and everyone was tromping
around in it as if it were a regular discussion group. :-)
Anyway, so .announce is sort of broken; it's only doing about 50% of what it
was intended to do. Could it be that the name ".announce" is too "un-news"
sounding? Or is it something more mechanical? -- do people consider it to
be too much hassle to crosspost something into .announce with followups set
to a discussion group? (I kind of doubt that, given how easy crossposting
is once you know how to do it, but I thought I'd ask.)
Would a group named .announce.news create confusion? (Is there a name which
wouldn't?) One tricky thing about the word "news" is its dual meaning in
the context of words like "NNTP" and "newsgroup" and "newsreader" -- all of
which deal with things that aren't necessarily "news" news. :-)
How do people find out about "news" types of things currently? Maybe
announce isn't actually broken? Maybe people don't need it for "news"
types of things?
Does anyone scan thread titles and click into threads that sound
interesting? Or does everyone read everything in the groups they're
subscribed to?
I found out about Chet's message right away because my inbox beeped at me
soon after he posted it. (I'm subscribed to .announce by email, but I
surely wouldn't subscribe to .general by email because of the flood of
messages I'd get! :-)
What if a news-by-mail subscription option sent you notifications only of
messages at the top of brand new threads?
--Todd
[followups to lugnet.admin.general]
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