> Have there been any discussions on the merits of these groups? If so, 
> where could those discussions be found?

Yup - I didn't post pointers here to the RFDs at the time because I didn't
know P2P existed. Sorry about that... but it's also relevant for your
first question below. Discussion was on news.groups (as it always is
for new newsgropus) - and to be honest, further discussion should probably
be carried out there. (It's only by luck that I checked here again - I
don't normally read these forums.)

> Even though I voted YES the last time this was proposed, I have two 
> concerns:
> 
> 1 - There exists a mailing list hosted by Sun for servlets. While a 
> mailing list is not the same as a newsgroup, the point is that there is 
> already a forum for this topic

Yes - there are already *lots* of forums, but no particularly *standard*
one. There are also the jserv and tomcat user list, the groups here,
the sun mailing list, the sun discussion forum... the list goes on.
Usenet groups (at least in the Big8) are often seen as the first stop for
someone looking for a standard place to find answers - that's certainly
one of the uses I have for them. They're "central", vendor-neutral, and
have software specifically designed for handling discussions. (I far
prefer using newsgroups for discussions to using mailing lists, simply
because that's what they're really designed for.)

> 2 - The groups are unmoderated.

I don't see that as being a problem - it's certainly not much of a problem
(as far as I'm concerned) in the other java newsgroups. A newsgroup being
moderated can dissuade people from posting in the first place - in some
cases this may be good, as they're more likely to check a FAQ; in others
it may be bad as they may have legitimate questions. Moderated groups
will also necessarily have slower discussions.

I hope these answers explain things slightly further - feel free to
either mail me directly (skeet@p...) or post on news.groups with
further questions or comments on my answers :)

Jon