From: "'Bruce Wright'" <bruce <at> AIS <dot> COM>
Date: 30 jan 1996
Subject: Re: News group (was: game analysis and annotation)

Pieter Stouten writes:
>At 19:36 96/01/29, george (g.) jost wrote:
>
>>5) Shogi newsgroup: yes I agree. Of course newsgroups do have the
>>tendancy to get cluttered with trash.
>>
>True enough, although unlike alt.internet.services, it's unlikely that it
>will be flooded with sex-related postings <g>. The level-to-noise ratio of
>news groups might be a reason to keep shogi-l and a rec.games.shogi
>separate. Any opinions?

I disagree.  There may be somewhat more "noise" in a newsgroup, but if
there is not a gateway between the list and the newsgroup, one or the
other is likely to become nearly idle or, possibly worse, the newsgroup
could wind up with few or no people connected with the shogi scene but
with some people dropping by and asking "what's this?" and possibly
being answered by people who are nearly equally ignorant.

I think that things should either continue as they are, or that we should
try to get our own newsgroup and gateway the list both ways with the
newsgroup (for those people who don't have or don't want news access).
The big advantage of having a newsgroup is that the game could get much
more world-wide exposure that way than it ever could with a mailing list.
It's true that a lot of the people who drop in are likely to be the
idly curious, who may have a lot of questions, and may not stay around
very long;  but some of them will probably learn about a game they may
never have considered before.

It boils down to whether we want to have the discussions mostly between
people who are already interested in and probably know something about
the game, or whether we want to have the opportunity to promote the game
more widely and open up the discussion to include people who may never
have heard of the game before.  Both approaches have value, but I don't
think it makes any sense to have a newsgroup that is disconnected from
the mailing list.  Personally I would slightly favor a newsgroup, because
I don't think that this kind of group would generate the kind of junk
traffic that some groups do, and because I think the game ought to be
promoted more widely;  but as noted it would have a few drawbacks as well,
so on balance I don't feel very strongly either way.

Bruce C. Wright