jbuck@epicen.UUCP (Joe Buck) (08/30/85)
Well, it's started. When I saw Gene Spafford's note a while back on major
reorganization of the newsgroups, I was hoping it wouldn't be taken seriously
but was worried since Gene maintains the official newsgroups list (Gene,
I appreciate your work very much; I just strongly disagree with you on
this point).
But I've just received the newgroup messages for net.news.notes and for
net.games.chess. The former one is not a problem; there is little traffic
on net.notes. But the net is not that well connected these days; many sites
miss some of the important control messages. Changing the name of a group
with substantial traffic has not been attempted with the net anywhere near
its present volume (I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong). I don't think
there was sufficient discussion of the implications. We might end up with
regions of the net where net.chess rules, and others that have net.games.chess,
and others that have neither (assuming an rmgroup net.chess is planned).
In a few weeks this situation will be cleared up. Then comes the question
that will be asked by many inexperienced system adminstrators: "How do I
move my old net.chess messages to net.games.chess?" I know how to do this
(I'm constantly having to move messages out of "junk" because traffic
arrives before the newgroup, or the newgroup never comes), but many
administrators will have to be told.
PLEASE don't make any of the other proposed changes without waiting for
a while to see what happens because of this one! I'll postpone arguments
about net.sci.astro.expert (YUK!) until then.
--
Joe Buck | Entropic Processing, Inc.
UUCP: {ucbvax,ihnp4}!dual!epicen!jbuck | 10011 N. Foothill Blvd.
ARPA: dual!epicen!jbuck@BERKELEY.ARPA | Cupertino, CA 95014