rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (10/24/83)
I had made some proposals along the lines of the "Distribution" concept a while ago. What I was thinking of was more along these lines: Why have net.XXX or nj.XXX or anything.XXX??? Have groups like "wanted", "general", "misc", "audio", etc. THEN have an additional "distribution" field (that wasn't the name I had used, but it's probably better) associated with each article. Each site would have a variety of distribution characteristics like country-name, state/province name, company-name, site-name, machine-name. For example, pyuxn might be "usa, nj, btl, py, pyuxn". If you don't put a distribution field in your article, it would go to only some default (e.g., your machine, your site). This article would be labelled "Newsgroups: cog-eng ... Distribution: net", which would go to all sites. The "old" syntax (distribution.newsgroup) would be parsed by inews and re-organized accordingly. Thus by sending an article to "Newsgroups: audio, video ... Distribution: my state" allows the article to be seen by people only in your state (e.g.,"Tell me where the good places to buy audio and video tape are in this state?"). You could even indicate "Distrib.: my-company & my-state". This means go to all sites in this state that are also part of this company. Comments?
dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (10/26/83)
I think pyuxn!rlr's suggestion is a good one. Once we're already
answering the question (world,can,ont,tor,local?), we might as well
not have to specify the "net." in the newsgroup specification.
One concern I have relates to defining what newsgroups can cross
machine, state or country boundaries. For example, there is net.graphics
and at utcsrgv we have a local group "graf". (It could have been
called "graphics", but it wasn't.) Now, if someone posts to "graf"
and try to send the article across the whole net, inews has to step
in quickly and visibly to inform him that "graf" is a local group only.
And what if a neighbouring site creates a "graf" group? Who determines
whether posted articles can legitimately leave the machine?
Dave Sherman
Toronto
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{cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!lsuc!dave