newsgroup for cacti?

Martin Brown martin.brown at pandora.be
Tue Nov 6 03:41:17 EST 2001



Tumbleweed wrote:

> I for one am not keen on mailing lists. I've tried them from time to time
> but end up leaving them for the reasons following;
> With a newsgroup you can go have a look when you feel like it, and look back
> at old posts on google, but ignore if you want to.
> With email lists, you sometimes get inconvenient numbers of emails, which
> either clog up your inbox, or need to be filtered off, and no threading, so
> it can be difficult/impossible to follow discussions, plus you cant really
> archive them in an accessible way.

Most list servers offer options to control whether you get a message per day
containing all the traffic or individual messages as they are sent. Cacti_etc is
very well run and has a much higher signal to noise ratio than any usenet group.
So do most of the other specialist mail lists.

It is also archived so searching back for old threads is possible, just not via
google.

> Newsgroups OTOH are there to be looked at when you feel like it and dont
> otherwise bother you. You also dont get bothered by a flurry of emails in
> some flame war which are easy to ignore when they are in a single thread in a
> newsgroup.

Flame wars are extremely rare on decent listservers. Their great advantage is
that you can have one to cover a very narrow field of specialisation quite
easily.

> For those who like the email lists, can't you just continue with them and cc
> to newgroups (or other way round)?

Some listservers do reflect posts to newsgroups.

> After all, a newsgroup you dont subscribe
> to isnt going to cause you a problem is it? And 1 more out of 50,000 plus
> isnt really an issue either. Finally, I suspect its going to be easier to
> find a newsgroup than an email list, I wasnt aware of the agilent one until
> a couple of days ago. A newsgroup would bring everyone together into one
> place, instead of several different web forums or email lists.

It's widely known by people interested in growing cacti and succulents and many
of the online resources for these plants point to it. I probably would not
oppose creating a rec.gardens.cacti but I doubt it will be much frequented by
experts given the pre existence of an established high quality listserver in
"cacti_etc".

Usenet groups are these days are all too frequently being attacked by Java traps
and other hostile binaries exploiting loopholes in MS "security". (many
listservers are set to strip all binary attachments)

Proposing a new Usenet group without first canvassing for support from the
members of the main listserver devoted to the topic does not strike me as a
particularly smart opening gambit.

I can see why Cereoid* was not impressed with the original RFD.

Regards,
Martin Brown




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