Newsgroups: news.groups, news.admin.policy
From: hoey@aic.nrl.navy.mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: 1995/04/11
Subject: Re: RESULT: news.admin reorganization passes

dob...@info.usuhs.mil (Michael Dobson) writes:

> The existance of the .misc group is a side-effect of the reorg that
> gave us the current news.admin.* newsgroups.  Whenever a discussion
> group is promoted to a hierarchy with multiple topics, a .misc group
> is created as a catchall for the remaining topics.

That's nonsense.  Leaving the original group around with the original
name, is a perfectly good idea.  It works just fine for sci.math and
sci.physics to have the miscellaneous group named for the hierarchy.
Apparently, though, whenever someone issues an RFD to split a group,
the hierarchy-control storm troopers jump on you and say THOU SHALT
RENAME THE ORIGINAL GROUP TO .MISC, and the RFD author usually goes
along.

Someone even has a micro-FAQ to tell you why you need a .misc group.
They claim it simplifies news administration (which it doesn't), that
it reduces cross-posting (which it doesn't), that it helps maintain
the self-respect of the other subtopics (which it doesn't), that it
clarifies the hierarchy (which it doesn't), and that it keeps INN
happy (so fix INN already).  They even claim it makes the filesystem
work better, which is the silliest idea I ever heard of (is anyone
running a unix without inode cacheing any more?)

No, what happens is that the miscellaneous topics get relegated
to a subgroup, and then whenever someone comes up with a truly
miscellaneous post, they post it to every newsgroup in the hierarchy
(because nobody reads the misc group any more).

Just say no to .misc!

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil