[Zope] Could we migrate Zope email to a news group?

[Jimmie Houchin]

At 06:41 PM 5/6/99 GMT, Ty Sarna wrote:
>In article <199905061620.JAA08391@sam.engr.sgi.com>,
I will have to concur with much of what Paul writes here.

2 years ago I attempted to create a new set of newsgroups, which to my
astonishment failed.

Newsgroup lines:
comp.soft-sys.rad.c++.c++builder     Programming with Borland C++ Builder.
comp.soft-sys.rad.c++.misc           Misc. discussion of C++ language RAD
tools.
comp.soft-sys.rad.c++.power++        Programming with Powersoft Power++.
comp.soft-sys.rad.misc               Misc. discussion of  RAD environments.

comp.soft-sys.rad results - 123 valid votes

 Yes   No : 2/3? >100? : Pass? : Group
---- ---- : ---- ----- : ----- : -------------------------------------------
  95   21 :  Yes    No :    No : comp.soft-sys.rad.misc
  91   28 :  Yes    No :    No : comp.soft-sys.rad.c++.misc
  79   28 :  Yes    No :    No : comp.soft-sys.rad.c++.c++builder
  78   26 :  Yes    No :    No : comp.soft-sys.rad.c++.power++

It is an incredible amount of work writing and rewriting the RFDs involved.
Once you do get the RFDs written, you must monitor the news.groups
discussions about the RFD and participate in the discussion. Kooks come out
of the woodworks to battle you. I went thru 3 RFDs (two required), one just
to change names to something that throughout all of the discussions was
acceptable to most participants. Some you will never satisify. Some live in
news.groups simply to cause trouble and to vote no on any proposal. Some
believe there are too many groups.

I was actively participating in the Optima++/Power++ mailing lists which
averaged over 400 members and 40-60 posts per day, when I embarked on this
adventure.

What got me more than anything was the simple fact that even if I would
have gotten no "no" votes, it would have failed simply because of
insufficient "yes" votes. :(
I didn't even get a good percent of the members of the power++ mailing
list. In fact some voted no because they feared losing the mailing list.

More than 3 months and lots of hours of time and no results.

I do not wish to discourage anyone from creating a newsgroup on usenet. I
am a big usenet user, currently subscribed to 27 newsgroups. They are a
great source of information and knowledge. I just want whomever to be fully
aware of what they are taking on.

Usenet is not the only way to go. There are many publically available,
corporately sponsored newsgroups. DejaNews carries many. Zippo, who my isp
uses, also carries many. Groups such as:
  borland.public.*
  microsoft.*
  symantec.*

There will be newservers who won't carry such, but there are several large
ones who will. This may be the easiest way to go. Just contact Zippo,
DejaNews and such and find out what they required to mirror the newsgroups
from a Zope newsgroup server.

Just my $s worth. 

Jimmie Houchin


>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.