California UseNet Project Announcement

re-establishing newsgroup coordination for ca.*

Newsgroups: ca.news.group,ca.general,ca.usenet
From: ikluft@thunder.sbay.org (Ian Kluft)
Subject: re-establishing newsgroup coordination for ca.*
Distribution: ca
Message-ID: <DwFxIv.n3w@thunder.sbay.org>
Organization: sbay.org - South Bay/Silicon Valley Community Network
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 14:28:07 GMT
Followup-To: ca.news.group

[Followups directed to ca.news.group.]

Attention ca.* readers -

The recent reorganization attempt which would have removed ca.earthquakes
in a proposal to moderate sci.geo.earthquakes has brought up the issue
that Californians need to re-establish coordination of the ca.* newsgroups.
It has been quite some time since the last coordinator vacated the role.
(It cannot be done by one person.)

At this point, no one is under the illusion this will be an easy or quick
thing to do.  But we have expertise within California to learn lessons from
and improve upon the newsgroup processes used elsewhere.  In an initial
phase of this coordination effort, we are only seeking participants to
consider the possible approaches to the problem.  And we'll be seeking
support for the process, particularly from news admins without whose support
this cannot be implemented.

One of the things that will need to be discussed is a coherent newsgroup
creation procedure.  We should identify and avoid the mistakes that were
made with the Big-8 UseNet hierarchies.  The Big-8 procedures are unable
to change, though UseNet traffic is approximately 10,000 times larger than
when they were made 10 years ago.  So we need new ideas that can scale
with the continued growth of UseNet.

This discussion will take place on ca.news.group.  Some technical items
may have to be taken to a technical discusson mail list when the signal-
to-noise ratio makes that a more appropriate forum.

If you live in California, there are several ways you can support this:
1) Participate in the discussion on ca.news.group.
2) If you do not have the experience or inclination to participate in such
   an effort, you can still help by telling your news admin about it.
3) If you are a news admin, there are two levels of useful support:
   a) If you cannot participate, just be aware that newsgroup creation
      procedures for ca.* will be developed.  Please plan on supporting
      them and honoring the newgroup messages that result from them.
   b) If you can spare some time to participate, please join the technical
      discussion list at ca-coord-request@sbay.org
4) If you have UseNet technical expertise and can volunteer for any of the
   aspects of coordinating a large regional news hierarchy, please also
   join the mail list at ca-coord-request@sbay.org

At this point, before the discussion has begun, all possibilities should
be considered open for suggestion.  Please take them to ca.news.group.
-- 
Ian Kluft  KO6YQ PP-ASEL  http://www.kluft.com/~ikluft/   sbay.org coordinator
ikluft@thunder.sbay.org (home)  ikluft@cisco.com (work)           San Jose, CA