Post by Peter J RossPresumably you know that you can discuss Rhode Island in groups such
as
ri.general
and
alt.rhode_island
?
You certainly don't need a talk.* group to be approved by a gang of
self-important, clueless twats in order to talk about RI on Usenet.
The "talk" group was formed as a response to Verizon dropping its 30K
newsgroups in favor of just carrying 3K groups of the Big-8 hierarchy
series.
It was acknowledged in the discussions that a talk.* group was a
duplication of an extsing alt.* group. However the formation managed
to pass anyway.
This happened shortly after Verizon closed most of its Usenet feed in
response to threats from Atty Cuomo of NY state over allegations of CP
being stored on carrier hard drives. Cuomo wanted 80-88 groups killed
at the server levels or legal process against the carriers would take
place.
In response a couple of ISP systems simply used it as an excuse to
drop their Usenet feeds wholesale. That reslted in a cascading effect
of other ISP services dropping it in the ensuing months.
Verizon elected to keep Usenet but killed off everything but the Big-8
series.
Rather than program in available free news server options, or purchase
news from a premium carrier, group proponents went the route of
re-creating under "talk.*"
In *theory* this has set precedent for almost any regional or alt
group to be re-created in the Big-8 provided there is sufficient call
for it and the process of group formation is followed.
The discussions are archived of course.