From: glhansen@steel.ucs.indiana.edu 
  
 I was looking for a newsgroup for general discussions of biology, in the 
 smae manner that sci.physics is for physics.  And I found 18 newsgroups, 
 and all of them ghost towns.  There's no shortage of biologists compared 
 with physicists in the real world, and sci.physics is hopping.  So I 
 suspected a reason for the low traffic is too much fragmentation.  E.g., 
 one person goes to sci.bio.ethology to discuss animal behavior, another 
 person goes to sci.bio.herp to discuss the behavior of reptiles, and they 
 never meet. 
  
 Do we really need sci.bio.entomology.homoptera, 
 sci.bio.entomology.lepidoptera, and sci.bio.entomology.misc?  Is 
 entomology such a happening field that one newsgroup isn't big enough to 
 hold it all?  (Answer: no.  Weeks can pass without a message posted to any 
 of them.)  I suppose someone in the early days of Usenet must have been a 
 biologist with a special interest in entomology. 
  
 Sure, there's a sci.bio.misc, but a *.misc group doesn't say "First stop 
 for general discussions."  It says "Come here if you've been left out of 
 the other groups." 
  
 What would be the feasibility of trashing the entire sci.bio hierarchy and 
 creating just a single sci.biology?  Then add more groups as traffic 
 demands, but only when traffic demands. 
  
  
 -- 
 Irony: "Small businesses want relief from the flood of spam clogging their 
 in-boxes, but they fear a proposed national 'Do Not Spam' registry will 
 make it impossible to use e-mail as a marketing tool." 
 http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2003/11/10/newscolumn6.html 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)