Afloyd.28 net.general utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!mhtsa!harpo!floyd!trb Wed Jan 13 11:09:43 1982 Re: new newsgroup for word processors Yes, short names are dumb, but I think a primo candidate for net.jokes.q would be an explanation of why we are stuck with fourteen character newsgroup names. The "reason" is that we want to maintain compatibility with the Rand MH system. Would you believe it??? They should put that one on the "That's Incredible" tv show. Also, if the group was called net.jokes.questionable, everyone would get net.jokes.ques (truncated to 14), and people would start submitting to net.jokes.que and net.jokes.q, etc. (it happenned with unix-wizar and unix-wizards...) Maybe net.jokes.q wasn't the right decision, q.net.jokes or ug.jokes will probably be the eventual solution. But at the time, it seemed to me that the root part of the groupname was more sacred than the tail, so I figured that I had more right (as a mortal) to suggest net.jokes.q than q.net.jokes. I still advocate getting rid of the "all" classification, that way people who don't want to see ug-ly news won't be FORCED to see it. (keep foo.all, just abolish all.foo and all). Andy Tannenbaum ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.