Re: NO newsgroup

["John H. Kim" <jokim@tuna.mit.edu>]

1) Anyone who wants to propose a new thinkpad newsgroup should read
news.groups for a few weeks.  Afterwards, if you still feel up to it,
you can read through the FAQs there on how to write/submit an RFD,
and request a vote-taker for the CFV.

2) All this discussion about whether to have a newsgroup or not is
supposed to take place in news.groups after the RFD has been posted.
This mailing list represents a subset of all interested Thinkpad
users (most notably, people who don't like mailing lists are missing)
so we're not going to get an accurate idea of who likes what from 
discussion here.

3) How about comp.sys.laptops.ibm-thinkpad?  Although given the
argument that IBM has been using the term "Thinkpad" for several
decades, I could live with c.s.l.thinkpad.  (I'm the one who
proposed c.s.l.ibm)

4) On Tue, 31 Oct 1995, Paulo Magalhaes wrote:

> Just wanted to reiterate, too...
> Newsgroup = more background noise
> Newsgroup = less relevant information

Newsgroup = *more* relevant information, even more noise (a lower
S/N ratio), but much better tools for searching and sorting threads.

> Newsgroup = unavailable to certain people

Since there's no easy-to-access database of all mailing lists in
existence, my guess is that a comp.sys.laptops.thinkpad newsgroup
would be "available" to at least an order of magnitude more people
than this mailing list.  I used to post every week or so in c.s.l
that this list existed, but it got to be a hassle saying the same
thing over and over.  A lot of TP75x owners there don't know this
list exists.

> What's the obsession with newsgroups anyway?!?!

Well, first thing I'd do is put Win95, NT, and TP755 in a kill file.
I'd also like to be able to kill threads (like this one) with one
keystoke instead of deleting/skipping them message by message.

5) If my opinion is worth anything :), this mailing list was started
by Sean Chou when I joked with him about putting together an Internet 
TP750 support group.  It just turned/will turn 2 years old (depending
on what event you consider the "birth" of this list).  But I vote for
a newsgroup.

6) I can see why Keith wanted us to email him comments on the idea so
he could summarize.  This thread is killing the S/N ratio here.
___________________________________________________________________________
John H. Kim        "A common mistake that people make when trying to design
jokim@mit.edu       something completely foolproof is to underestimate the
jokim@tuna.mit.edu  ingenuity of complete fools." -- Douglas Adams