Why?

There is also a comp.robotics, but it hasn't had much traffic in maybe

10 years. My guess is that the c.r.m group was created to handle "all other" discussions not directly related to higher-level robotics, and it's where the bulk of posters ended up going. When c.r and c.r.m. were created, likely by someone at a university, it wasn't uncommon to create a "sub" newsgroup for handling off-topic discussions. The sub groups are often the most lively ones!

-- Gordon Author: Constructing Robot Bases, Robot Builder's Sourcebook, Robot Builder's Bonanza

In 1995, "comp.robotics" was split into two separate groups. The unmoderated "comp.robotics.misc" replaced the original "comp.robotics". And the new moderated "comp.robotics.research" was created. Such things were done as the result of a vote. Here is the post with the result of that vote:

Since the vote passed, a Usenet control message was sent out creating the new groups. At a later time, another control message was sent out to remove the old "comp.robotics" group. Unfortunately, not all Usenet systems paid attention to the remove messages (for good reason!).

The posts you see in "comp.robotics" today are from rogue systems that still have the group active.

I hope you enjoyed today's little lesson in the arcane workings of the Usenet system! :)

-James Nugen

Interesting. Not long ago I attempted to follow up to a post here which was apparently posted to "comp.robotics". My news software refused to post my follow-up because it said that I was trying to post to a non-existant group. Now I understand why :-)

-Brian