[net.religion] IMPORTANT! net.religion.christian --> net.religion.xian

gam@amdahl.UUCP (Gordon A. Moffett) (12/11/84)

I have decided to change the name of net.religion.christian to
net.religion.xian.  A "newgroup" message has been sent.

Please avoid future use of net.religion.christian as I will rmgroup it
in a week or so.  Current postings to net.religion.christian should
be moved to net.religion.xian by their authors.

I am doing this because of a NOTES user who wrote me of the following
problem:

> Being on notes here rather than news, notesfile names get truncated to
> the first 14 characters.  Thus, net.religion.christian gets truncated to
> net.religion.c .
> 
> Our hub system (hpfcla), and probably a few other hubs, routinely purge all
> control notesfiles (e.g., net.religion.ctl).  Due to the truncation, anything
> ending with '.ct' or '.c' also gets removed.
> 
> The result of all this is that we can't receive net.religion.christian, since
> it disappears every night...  Could I suggest renaming it net.religion.xian,
> or is it too late?

I presume his reasoning for net.religion.xian was the accepted
abbreviation of 'X' for "Christ" ("Ch" = greek "X"), and this seems
fine with me.

Since net.religion.christian is a relatively new group, and because
the consequences of it not changing would be that some people would
be cut off from it, I decided to make this change.

My reason for changing it is not because the name is too long.
However, as long as there are numerous NOTES users, the impact
of the 14-char limit must be considered for uniqueness and for this
unfortunate ".ctl" confusion.

Send flames to net.flame.


Yours for a better net,
-- 
Gordon A. Moffett		...!{ihnp4,hplabs,amd,sun}!amdahl!gam

37 22'50" N / 121 59'12" W	[ This is just me talking. ]

stein@fortune.UUCP (Mark Stein) (12/12/84)

> I have decided to change the name of net.religion.christian to
> net.religion.xian.  A "newgroup" message has been sent.
> ...
> My reason for changing it is not because the name is too long.
> However, as long as there are numerous NOTES users, the impact
> of the 14-char limit must be considered for uniqueness and for this
> unfortunate ".ctl" confusion.

It sure would have been nice to throw this open for discussion.  If you
had, you would have found out that notesfiles has this nice feature which
allows arbitrary newsgroup names ("net.religion.christian") to be mapped to
some arbitrary notesfile name (say "net.christian").  This can be done in
the notesfile "newsgroups" file on the affected machines and would have the
following syntax:

	notesfile:newsgroup
	net.christian:net.religion.christian

B news newsgroup names were extended to get around the 14 character
limitation.  Why should a notesfile limitation dictate a name change,
especially when notesfiles provides a solution to its own problem?

			Mark Stein
			Fortune Systems
			{ihnp4,nsc,hpda,amdcad,sri-unix}!fortune!stein

pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (12/12/84)

Yes, please change it back.  As has already been pointed out the
change is unnecesary for notesfiles users, since there is a way
around it.  Even if there was a problem, it whould have been nice
if you had at least consulted users of the group on the choice
of a new name.  I don't like 'xian'.  I'm just bothered by replacing
'christ' with 'x'.  I think that's reasonable for a Christian.
What would have been wrong with "net.religion.christ"?  That is
the same length as "net.religion.jewish".

Anyway, please change it back to net.religion.christian.

Thanks,

-- 

Paul Dubuc	cbscc!pmd

aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent) (12/13/84)

> net.religion.christian gets truncated to net.religion.c .

Finally, someone admits that they worship these machines, or at least the
language wherein most of their software is written.  [1/2 :-)]

-- 
-- Jeff Sargent
{decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq
Clearing /tmp