Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!yale!zip.eecs.umich.edu!umn.edu!pico!hougen
From: hougen@pico.cs.umn.edu (Dean Hougen)
Subject: Re: Splitting comp.robotics
Message-ID: <Cw4xup.20x@news.cis.umn.edu>
Summary: keep comp.robotics itself
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Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, CSci dept.
References: <JLA.94Sep8102723@sandshark.cs.indiana.edu> <GAMIN.94Sep12065835@amadeus.ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca> <Cw47Bz.7Bp@armory.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 19:43:05 GMT
Lines: 30

In article <Cw47Bz.7Bp@armory.com> rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz) writes:
>... there still needs to be a parent
>group to these third order newsgroup names!! Just as alt.sex has numerous
>other alt.sex.* hung off it, so should comp.robotics have comp.robotics.*,
>but retaining the original group for introductory material or presentation
>of material for every year's crop of up and comings folks and those who
>want OPEN discussion and eclecticism!!! So keep c.r, and make c.r.research
>or c.r.advanced or c.r.snobby-expert or WHATEVER! ...
[more of the same deleted]
>-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

While I disagree with Steve's tone (I don't see calling for the split as
snobbery, merely an attempt to create more usable groups), I do think he
has brought up an important question that I have not seen addressed thus
far: Should comp.robotics itself be retained in the event that some more
focused groups are created?  Here I agree with Steve.  I think that the
original comp.robotics should be retained for discussions that don't fit
neatly into one of the more specialized groups.  Further, removing groups
has never worked well, so many sites would retain comp.robotics even if
an attempt was made to remove it.  This would cause all of the problems
normally associated with groups having spotty distribution and network
inconsistancies.

Dean Hougen
--
"In a perfect world there's uniformity.  
 We're all brothers in a perfect world.
 In a perfect world there's continuity.
 Perfect system, we're all brothers to the end."
    - Oingo Boingo
