From edward_ohare at yahoo.com Wed Feb 4 16:16:03 2004 From: edward_ohare at yahoo.com (edward ohare) Date: Wed Jan 12 17:26:29 2005 Subject: [REVIEW] us.talk.headline-news Message-ID: Newsgroup: us.talk.headline-news Description: Discussion of major US related non-political events Moderated: No Moderator-Submission-Address: Not Applicable Moderator-Contact-Address: Not Applicable Charter-Location: ftp://ftp.isc.org/usenet/control/us/us.talk.headline-news.gz FAQ-Location: None Reviewer: edward ohare Review-Date: January 29, 2004 This is a group appropriate for about any US related newsworthy topic. Past threads have included discussion of "news of the weird", social issues, deaths of famous people, business and economics, and terrorism. Originally intended as a non-politcal group, the practicality is that many issues are touched by politics. Even though political issues are discussed, it hasn't become a traditional political group. Those types of groups tend to focus on attacks on politicians, with the issues used as a method of attack. Here, the political posts usually reverse that, addressing the issues first with attacks on politicians, if any, secondary. Although there is a bit of flame, the group is, as Nick Nicholas observed concerning another matter, typical of the "vigorous sometimes rancorous debate for which newsgroups are deservedly famous". Some of this is inevitable, as the early groupers represent a good variety of liberals and conservatives, with some falling into different camps depending on whether the topic a social issue, an economic one, or a political one. Crossposting tends to be the norm (although the us.* limit of 5 groups is usually observed) with obituaries tending to get crossposted to alt.obituaries, gay union posts crossposted to soc.bi and religious groups, and "news of the weird" posts often ending up in groups who have interest in the Darwin Awards. There are unlikely to be complaints about crossposts as long as they are relevant and within the us.* crossposting limit. Traffic is high enough to make the group interesting but far from so high that it is difficult to follow. The group has had a little less than 2600 posts in the first six months after creation. For variety in newsworthy events, us.talk.headline-news is the place.