Unix-wizards

[mike.rice%rand-relay at sri-unix.UUCP]

From:  Mike.Caplinger <mike.rice at rand-relay>

I hope I'm not be short-sighted or elitist here, but recent
Unix-wizards traffic has convinced me that this newsgroup, like so many
others, follows Sturgeon's Law; 90% of it is garbage.  Do we really
need an extended discussion of whether osh means "old shell" or not,
and whether this is a good convention?  Do we really need to discuss
the relative merits of RAW and CBREAK mode?

I use this group as a forum to ask difficult questions about bugs in
Unix systems; as a means to track down obscure programs and drivers;
and as a way to propagate the knowledge we gain at Rice running about
10 diverse Unix and emulated-Unix systems.  I have a hard time doing
this when a large fraction of the messages are basically fluff, some of
it irrelevant, and a disturbing portion just plain wrong.

The newsgroups I've been most impressed with, such as WorkStations and
TCP/IP, are edited groups.  The editor is held responsible for weeding
out the obvious trash, and arranging the remaining messages in some
reasonable way.  This is a tough job; I couldn't do it even if Rice
were an Arpanet site, and able to handle the traffic.  (Please note
that this is in no way intended to be derisive of the people currently
in charge or anyone on the group; I've certainly contributed my share
of garbage over the years.)  But we really need to do something.  If
people can't handle this job, perhaps some form of "intelligent
reflector" could.

Does anybody have any relevant ideas on this?

					Mike Caplinger
					Dept. of Math Sciences
					Rice University
					(mike.rice at rand-relay)