In article <199905061620.JAA08391@sam.engr.sgi.com>, Paul Jackson <pj@sam.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
I had a few suggestions in my message that started this thread. My favorite is:
comp.infosystems.www.servers.zope
But I'm no wizard in such matters, so don't put much weight in this suggestion.
Getting a group in the Big Eight is difficult. There has to be a high level of interest. It takes a minimum of 56 days to go through the process. You'll need at least 100 yes votes, and every no vote is worth two yeses (2/3 majority required, and at least 100 more yes votes than nos). There will be people who vote no, too. Even those who know nothing about Zope, for a variety of reasons -- everything from the name to to people who will point out that competing software doesn't have groups, and thus we don't need one either. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, but you have to *really* want it, and have backing from a lot of other people who *really* want it too. I don't think there is enough support currently to get one through. And if you fail, you can't try again for a minimum of 6 months. See: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/groups/FAQ%3A_Why_People_Vote_No_on_USENET_Votes ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/groups/How_to_Create_a_New_Usenet_Newsgroup for more information. And I still worry that the signal-to-noise ratio will drop a lot. Besides blatantly off-topic spam and mail, there will be a ton of "What is Zope?" and "Why should I use Zope instead of XXX?" threads, with the same content, over and over. Even with a FAQ that answers these questions, people will still ask them. As a signature I read recently pointed out, "Usenet has gone from smart people sitting in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart terminals"