ksh@cbosgd.UUCP (06/26/84)
On Thursday night of the Usenix Conference, a Birds-of-a-Feather concerning Usenet took place. Many issues were discussed and voted on. We'll summarize those issues here, and tell you which group the follow-up discussions should take place in. First of all, the Usenet maps were discussed. These are the maps that Karen posts to net.news.map on the first of every month. After the first of July, the 'Mail' line in the maps will go away (this decision was made before the conference). This will be replaced by the UUCP map, that will be posted (hopefully) before the first of July. Since most people use these maps to route mail, it was felt that posting them quarterly instead of every month would be enough (changes only would be posted once a month). Please mail comments on this change to cbosgd!ksh, or discuss in net.news.map. I should also mention that due to my time constraints, the maps will continue to be posted once a month through the summer. By then, I should have the time to devote to getting software written to post changes only. Second, the idea of including the date a site joined the net (in the Usenet maps) was vetoed. The idea of including the date the entry was last edited was approved. Comments to cbosgd!ksh. The idea of removing net.general and/or net.followup. No one was opposed, but many felt that the idea should be put before the net so that those who were unable to go to Usenix could be heard. Discussion of this topic is taking place in net.news.group. A committee to decide on new newsgroups had been proposed to the net. Discussion made it clear that almost nobody was in favor of this idea. Comments to cbosgd!mark. Renaming some nontechnical net.all groups as pers.all. This idea was proposed two years ago and rejected, but the increased levels of traffic suggested it might be worthwhile to raise again. However, there was no support for the idea. It was instead felt that if sites wanted to cut down on the number of newsgroups, they should be able to choose for themselves which ones they want or don't want. Comments to cbosgd!mark. Karen Summers-Horton and Mark Horton