Re: Proposed group addition

[Aaron Heiss <heiss@deletethis.pdx.edu>]

On Wed, 31 Oct 2001, Brian Hyer wrote:

> OK, then. Let's have a little vote-a-thon amongst ourselves. The questions
> before the readership are as follows:
>
> 1. In your opinion only, does the current traffic on Usenet support the
> creation of a non-Macintosh, non-Apple-II newsgroup within the comp.sys.*
> hierarchy?
>
I think it a poor idea.  First, consider that there already is a
comp.sys.newton heirarchy, with more activity on it than on csa2.  I doubt
that many Newton users would find a "grab-bag" group for discontinued
Apple products of much interest.

Second, I think that the Lisa and the Apple /// are too dissimilar to
build up much of a community based only on those two systems.  Yes, there
is a large number of Apple collectors, but most of them also collect //s
and old Macs, and I think that we can tolerate the occasional Apple ///
question here.  I doubt that the traffic will be sufficient to support a
group all by itself.

Personally, I think that the other posts in this thread indicate a real
need for a discontinued Mac group (which could easily take on the Lisa
questions as well -- after all, the end-of-the-line Lisas *were* called
"Mac XL"s, right?).  There are a *lot* of people who still use 68K and
early PPC Macs; if the modern Mac people are so snotty, there should be an
old Mac group that doesn't involve them.

As for a name, how about comp.sys.mac.legacy or comp.sys.mac.old or some
such?  (I'd be happy with comp.sys.mac.68k, but that'd leave the early PPC
people in the lurch, and I'm not so bigoted as to encourage that!)

> 2. Would you subscribe to such a group and use it? If the majority of people
> for whom the group would be a benefit won't use such a group regularly, it's
> a waste of resources to try and get it created. There's a lot of work
> involved in creating a high-level Usenet group.
>
A general-purpose Apple legacy product group?  I wouldn't be interested.
As for an old Mac group, I would happily subscribe, although I'm not
active enough with Macs at the moment to contribute much of interest.

> 3. What is your proposed name for such a group? So far I've seen:
>
> comp.sys.apple.discontinued
> comp.sys.apple.legacy
> comp.sys.apple.non-macintosh (my own contribution)
>
> Like one? Hate one? Got an idea of your own? Let's hear it.
>
Like I said, I don't think that the idea itself is particularly good.  If
I had to pick one, I think I'd go with csal, though.

> 4. Any comments/thoughts on the whole process? Let's hear those too.
> Constructive criticisms will be cheerfully accepted; flames will be just as
> cheerfully tossed in the rubbish and set ablaze, while dancing on a burning
> effigy of the potential flamer and sticking voodoo pins in it... <grin>
>
No offence meant: I just don't think that a catch-all group would be worth
the effort, and I suspect that the Newton people might get insulted if we
included them without asking on comp.sys.newton.misc or someplace like
that as well.  Really, I think that the solution is to create a
comp.sys.mac.legacy group, and let the Lisa questions go there and the
Apple /// stuff go here.  If we get bowled over with traffic, we can spawn
a new group for the A3 stuff, but I doubt that that would happen (nice
though it would be!).

As for renaming an existing group, I disapprove.  I like my csa2!

I hope that others feel as I do.  A comp.sys.mac.legacy group would be a
good thing indeed.


Aaron Heiss

heiss(AT)pdx(DOT)edu
http://web.pdx.edu/~heiss/