Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!ox.com!ox.com!emv
From: emv@ox.com (Ed Vielmetti)
Subject: Re: PPP: Let's create comp.protocols.ppp
In-Reply-To: brian@telebit.com's message of 24 Apr 91 23:58:27 GMT
Message-ID: <EMV.91Apr24223419@poe.aa.ox.com>
Sender: usenet@ox.com (Usenet News Administrator)
Organization: OTA Limited Partnership, Ann Arbor MI.
References: <1991Apr19.054904.23533@telebit.com>
	<1991Apr21.052511.22841@onion.rain.com>
	<SWANSONC.91Apr23132735@grendel2.acc.stolaf.edu> <17113@celit.fps.com>
	<1991Apr24.235827.26048@telebit.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1991 02:34:22 GMT

In article <1991Apr24.235827.26048@telebit.com> brian@telebit.com (Brian Lloyd) writes:

   I guess that bottom line is that there is interest in forming this new
   newsgroup regardless of its name.  No name yet proposed is optimal but
   not having the newsgroup is definitely suboptimal.  I have never
   created a newsgroup before so I will leave it up to someone else to
   do.  If someone else with more experience does not do it within a day
   or two, I will.

Brian, please don't just create the group.

There is an established protocol for creating a new newsgroup; it's
rather speedier than (e.g.) the ISO standardization process, but it
does take a while to spin itself out.  Right now we're in the
"discussion" phase, which involves a ritual wailing and gnashing of
teeth over picking the right name.  The prescribed time for that is
two weeks (see news.announce.newgroups). I'm collecting all of the
traffic about PPP, in all of the groups that I get and will include
that information in the "call for votes" which looks like I'm going
to start some time in May.  The vote itself will take all of May
(about a month).

Although it's kind of a pain that traffic is spread around, it's
useful to wait for all of the necessary usenet rules have been waited
for.  It's just not practical for news administrators to have to guess
whether new groups are valid, and going through the ritual ensures
plenty of advance billing and time to prepare for the easy to answer
questions.  For now, there's always the IETF PPP mailing list,
subscriptions to ietf-ppp-request@ucdavis.edu.

Between now and say June 1, use comp.dcom.modems and comp.dcom.lans
for this kind of stuff; after that, the group (whatever its name is)
show have plenty of reasonable traffic.  My preference is
comp.protocols.ppp, in no small part because "ppp" is a unique enough
and catchy enough acronym to be easily found in vast volumes of news
by automatic methods.  "serial internetworking" or some contraction of
it is more descriptive but much hard to grep for....

-- 
 Msen	Edward Vielmetti
/|---	moderator, comp.archives
	emv@msen.com

"(6) The Plan shall identify how agencies and departments can
collaborate to ... expand efforts to improve, document, and evaluate
unclassified public-domain software developed by federally-funded
researchers and other software, including federally-funded educational
and training software; "
			High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, S. 218


