Aucbarpa.631 net.general utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:arnold Tue Jan 12 23:35:55 1982 Re: new newsgroup for word processors The suggestion to call this newsgroup net.wp prompts the following flame that has been billowing up inside for quite a while, and has finally found a path to the surface: Why do people seem to think they have to make the names as short as possible? I supsect that at least a small part of the problem with net.jokes.q and net.db were that nobody know what the hell they were, and so unwittingly fell into that morass. People should remember that we aren't inventing variable names in BASIC. We can use quite a few more letters if we like. "net.wordproc", for example, is more descriptive than "net.wp", except to people who hang around the area (although both are more descriptive than "net.jokes.q". What does "q" stand for? quick? questions? quality? quadriceptial?) "net.mc" suffers from the same form of atrophy. So when you think of newsgroup names, don't try and cram it into as few letters as possible. Let's be a LITTLE descriptive, for everyone's sake. Especially braindamaged people like myself who can't read people's minds across network connections. Ken ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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.