[net.news.config] More Backbone Newsgroup Cuts

woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) (02/04/86)

  Due to economic reality (specifically, the management zeroing in on how
much the net really costs at a time when we are experiencing a severe
budget cut due to the Graham-Rudman bill), hao is going to go the way of
utzoo and drop some newsgroups. net.flame is already dead here and has been
for some time. The rest of the soapbox groups account for over 25% of the
total net traffic. We have had discussions on the subject locally (i.e.
involving all the sites "downstream" from us) and the responses I got indicate
that very few people actually read any of those groups and even those that do
support cutting them to save the net in Colorado. Therefore, the cuts will
be made here. The affected groups are net.abortion, net.religion, 
net.philosophy and net.politics (and their subgroups). The neighboring site
admins will be getting mail requesting them to stop sending us those groups.
On Thursday, Feb. 6, the articles in those groups will be purged from our
disks and the lines for them removed from the active file. I regret any
inconvenience this may cause to anyone, but the alternatives available
are even more unpleasant.

--Greg
--
{ucbvax!hplabs | decvax!noao | mcvax!seismo | ihnp4!seismo}
       		        !hao!woods

CSNET: woods@ncar.csnet  ARPA: woods%ncar@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA

jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) (02/04/86)

In article <1936@hao.UUCP> woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) writes:
>...
>that very few people actually read any of those groups and even those that do
>support cutting them to save the net in Colorado. Therefore, the cuts will
>be made here. The affected groups are net.abortion, net.religion, 
>net.philosophy and net.politics (and their subgroups). The neighboring site
>admins will be getting mail requesting them to stop sending us those groups.
>On Thursday, Feb. 6, the articles in those groups will be purged from our
>disks and the lines for them removed from the active file. 

I support your decision to cut high-volume groups.  But I see a big problem
with removing the lines from your active file, since you're a backbone. Your
system will then strip the names off of cross-posted messages, but they will
still have the same message-id.  So if someone posts an article on Godel's
Theorem to both net.philosophy and net.math, some parts of the net that get
both lists will see it only in net.math, if the message has passed through
hao. Others will see it in both groups.

How about leaving the lines in active, and using the sys file to reject unwanted
groups?  That is, say

hao:net,mod,...,!net.religion,!net.abortion,!net.philosophy,!net.politics

Any comments from more knowledgeable net-wizards?
-- 
- Joe Buck
- ihnp4!pesnta!epimass!jbuck
or ihnp4!pesnta!epicen!jbuck

honey@down.FUN (Peter Honeyman) (02/05/86)

regarding greg's cutback, i am the net.creator of two of the four
groups he is dropping: net.religion and net.philosophy.  i suppose i
should be offended, but since the creation message consisted of a call
to unsubscribe, i'm taking it in stride.

someone should inform spaf that net.religion and net.philosophy were
net.created in a totally unauthorized and officially-frowned-upon
manner.  spanky!ka and alice!sjb can provide details.
	peter

david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) (02/08/86)

In article <656@down.FUN> honey@down.FUN (Peter Honeyman) writes:
>   spanky!ka and alice!sjb can provide details.

peter, 

shame on you... you're not giving proper edge identification for these people.
how do we know which alice or spanky you're talking about?

-- 
David Herron,  cbosgd!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET, david@uky.csnet.
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