Cheryl > wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 23:47:31 +0200, (Victor Sack)
> wrote:
>
> >Personally, I happen to be basically sympathetic to this particular
> >proposal and just wish to be persuaded of its merit and of the viability
> >of the proposed newsgroup. Some hard statistics on the actual interest
> >in the newsgroup, such as that of food-related postings specifically in
> >the Australian context on other newsgroups over the recent years would
> >be welcome and even necessary, as far as I'm concerned.
> >
> This would be extraordinarily difficult to do.
Why, pray, do you think so? Even with rudimentry search skills this
shouldn't so extraordinary difficult. I know that such statistics are
compiled with some regularity by the proponents of new Big-8 newsgroups.
> Most of the posts
> relating to food or recipe requests in Australian newsgroups would not
> be under headings that would be easily identifiable in Google until
> recently (approx the last 5 months) when Ms Leebee started the whole
> discussion about whether or not to request an aus.food group.
No one in his right mind would do it this way. Instead, if you were the
proponent, you would compile a list of keywords relevant to food from an
Australian perspective, refine it with Boolean operators, and limit it
all to newsgroups you consider relevant. You could get your results in
one fell swoop and they would provide you with enough details to refine
the search still further. Do this a few more times and you are there.
It doesn't really take very long or require all that much effort. If
the proponents don't know how, they ought to ask for advice and help -
and I have said this several times already. David has agreed to provide
advice (thank you again, David!) and if he can't help in this particular
matter, maybe he can point to someone who can.
Victor