bb@lanl-a.UUCP (11/10/83)
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Several persons that read net.games.frp have brought up the idea
of a subgroup that gamers would use to tell stories about their
gaming experiences. Net.games.frp.chron or .camp have been suggested
as names for such a group. Many of us think it is a good idea, but
rabbit!jj has raised several interesting points about the idea
and I will list them (the reference is rabbit.2177).
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While it will make entertaining reading, and undoubtedly be
of interest to net people, I really fear political problems.
It will undoubtedly have a high bandwidth, and start to
eat up a lot of storage, unless it gets expired once a week,
or so. <instead of two weeks, which I understand is the current
default in most cases>
I think, that before we add yet another news group, we should
consider what it will do to the out-of-control cost of netnews.
Would some net.news.group people with experience please join in
the discussion? <And post it to both groups>
If it is created, I think it should be <oh NO!> two groups,
one for S-F RPG's and one for F&S RPG's. Why? I don't
like Traveler very much, and I'll bet that a lot of people
feel the same way about D&D * <is a trademark of TSR hobbies>
type games.
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Ok, are netnews costs out of control? I really don't know and
haven't heard anything about costs on the net lately.
Is netnews eating up more and more disk space? What is the growth
curve like? I don't have any idea of how many people would submit
lengthy articles to such a group -- 10 to 15 a week seems to me to
be a upper limit, on average 100 lines or so, so that makes 40-90K
bytes a week?? Is that going to be trouble for some sites?
I don't have any objections to more than one group; though actually I
am quite proficient with the 'n' key so not having two groups
wouldn't put a strain on me.
'Political problems'. I like very much the open unrestricted
atmosphere of netnews. I dislike very much the policy of letting
site admins decide what their users and even worse, sites fed by
them should and should not see. I understand their position and
that they aren't usually the ones that really decide what to do
about netnews and 'non-work related' groups. But I don't think
that this new group would be nearly as controversial as net.motss.
Also, I must point out that if the consensus is that this new group
shouldn't be created frp'rs would continue to use net.games.frp
for their campaign descriptions as has been done in the past .
A new group would only be a convenience, not a necessity
as was the case with net.motss.
Please comment to both net.news.group and net.games.frp. Thanks,
b2 Bryan Bingham {ucbvax!lbl-csam, cmcl2, purdue}!lanl-a!bb
alb@alice.UUCP (11/11/83)
Until the entire net upgrades to 2.10 or better, net.games.frp canNOT have ANY subgroups. This is because it is already 13 characters long, which means its dot file (for <2.10 sites) is 14 long, which means any subgroups would have the same dot file, causing conflicts.
ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist) (11/14/83)
Not quite true. If two newsgroup names share a common 13 initial characters but differ in the 14th, then they will share the same dot file. This will cause holes to appear in the article numbers for both groups, but netnews will still work. So the limit is still that newsgroup names must be unique to within the first 14 characters. (If not, then they will share the same directory, which *will* cause real problems.) Kenneth Almquist
arnold@umcp-cs.UUCP (11/15/83)
Instead of net.games.frp.tales or net.games.frp.chronicals How about net.games.tales This could be used like net.games.pbm There are people who have intresting stories, adventures, tales about games other than frp games. Stories about Go, Chess, Wargames, ... This will also relieve the problem of the same first 13 or 14 characters. --- arnold -- --- Arnold Miller, U of Maryland, College Park MD Usenet: ...!seismo!umcp-cs!arnold Arpanet: arnold%umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay
lee@unm-cvax.UUCP (11/27/83)
I am the site administrator for unmvax. A while back our spool directory filled up as a direct result of news. My boss (not knowing what else to do) rm -rf'd the entire directory. We no longer receive news. However, I and a few others on the machine feel it is worthwhile. So, I am in the process of bringing it back up on our new Eagles with 70 MEG allocated for /usr/spool (let's see you guys blow that up!) Now then, if it should cause me undue troubles I can easily justify blowing it away again. So, keep this in mind when you are talking about creating new news groups of any form or purpose. Also, just for statisitics our phone bill last month was $450.00. That was WITHOUT news. We will receive news from a local call. But, what if it wasn't a local call? I would definately ask our contact to restrict incoming groups. Think about it, --Lee (Ward) ucbvax!unmvax!lee