Ausadmin > wrote:

[snippage throughout]

I notice that there has been no reaction to my request to provide an
estimate of expected traffic for the proposed newsgroup and the current
traffic on the net related to this topic, i.e. food from an Australian
perspective. This is a standard, even elementary, request and the
reasons for it are well explained in the aus.* FAQ. Yet no estimate has
been forthcoming. Is this no longer of any importance in the aus.*
hierarchy? If so, shouldn't the pertinent parts be deleted from the FAQ
as no longer relevant?

A reminder: Creation of new newsgroups does not happen in a vacuum -
other newsgroups may well be affected, rec.food.cooking in this
particular case. There is little doubt that some valuable traffic may
be potentially diverted from rfc, thus damaging it, if only very
slightly. This, in itself, is a good enough reason to oppose the
creation of any such new newsgroup and the only reason to the contrary
that is still better is statistical evidence of enough interest in
recent years in the proposed topic to sustain the new newsgroup.

Some people may ask why such an evidence is important if there is to be
a vote which will show actual interest in the new group. The answer is
of course that the vote shows only the current interest, a moment's
snapshot, which may be influenced by many irrelevant factors. The
statistical evidence of long-term interest supplements the current one.

Come to think of it, why go through the motions of holding a vote at
all, then? Just create the bloody newsgroup and if people want to use
it, they will. What's the use of the aus.* hierarchy at all? The alt.*
one would be perfectly adequate.

> Other newsgroups that discuss food are completly oriented towards
> every other country except Australia.

This part of the rationale is not just misleading - it is untrue.
rec.food.cooking is a global newsgroup and is oriented towards any
country that happens to be discussed at any one point. This has been
pointed to the proponent early in the course of the RFD discussion.
Nothing happened, of course.

Victor