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Re: Improvement of Hindu Newsgroups is the goal
Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian (rbalasub@ecn.purdue.edu) wrote:
* Vivek Sadananda Pai <vivek@cs.rice.edu> wrote:
<much deleted>
* >If I'm advertising an event which will take place in 4 days, then I
* >probably won't be sending an announcement to a moderated group which
* >doesn't clear articles that quickly.
* If you are advertising for something which takes place in 4 days,
* not many people outside your town will come in such a short
* notice. As Dr. Jai Maharaj observed the soc.culture.indian.info
* practically has no posts. And we all know that sci has a much wider
* audience than srh.
and later,
* >>There may be a billion Hindus in the world, but most of them are not
* >>going to be on the internet for a long, long time to come. So
* >>an info newsgroup is probably a good idea 50 years from now.
* >
* >It's probably a good idea now as well. After all, if you look at other
* >newsgroups, you can definitely see info groups being utilized, and
* >given that we most definitely have seen info post on SRH, I am willing
* >to bet that an info group would be utilized.
* No. See the soc.culture.indian.info group.
soc.culture.indian.info was one of the best info newsgroups
ever. It was very well organized and had a steady feed of
around 10 posts a day (classified under REQUEST, INFO,
ANNOUNCEMENT and so on). At its peak, there were even 20 posts
at times on a single day. Posts were approved to the newsgroup
almost everyday. So in effect there were at least 50 postings
in a week. This was in spite of the fact that all REQUEST
kind of posts were digested into a single posting a day!
The moderator (right from its inception) was Sridhar
Venkatraman who was a graduate student at Arizona State
University. Around late October 1994, he had to go back to
India for ever (for certain personal reasons). Since he
couldn't have any Internet access from India, he decided to
find a replacement moderator for the group. Kevin Pinto, I
guess another grad student at Arizona State University, took
over the moderatorship. The group continued to be popular for
a while. I do not know what happened to the group afterwards.
The moderator had probably graduated and gone and hadn't
probably found a replacement moderator. Without a moderator,
the newsgroup withered away as there was no one else to
approve the articles. The only posting that eventually made
through to the newsgroup at regular intervals was a
pre-approved posting.
The problem with this info newsgroup was not the lack of
postings but the lack of a moderator. There is no way one can
compare the sci.info group with the proposed srh.info group
and allege that this proposed group will not get enough
postings.
Even today, it is possible to revive the sci.info newsgroup
and it will be of immense value to the Indian community. With
a simple vote, I guess a willing person can be installed as a
moderator and without any problems, the newsgroup will start
getting a sizeable number of postings.
--badri
--
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S.Badrinarayanan
Graduate Student
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Cornell University
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