furuta@MIMSY.UMD.EDU (11/02/85)
I should make note of a couple of administrative matters.
First, I am now located at the University of Maryland in College Park.
However, the laser-lovers list is still homed at Washington. (That's the
state, not the district, incidentally.)
Secondly, the Usenet feeds of Arpanet-originated mailing lists are in the
process of being restructured. My reading of the public discussion
accompanying the change is that the desirability of the change is still a
matter of controversy. Because of this, I am taking a middle-of-the-road
approach to the conversion. I have added the feed for the new "mod" group
but have not severed the "fa" group feed. When I am convinced that the "fa"
feed is redundant, I'll sever it, but not before then.
I'm doing this for a number of reasons. First, the reorganization involves
a renaming of the group for Usenet. Instead of being known as
"fa.laser-lovers" to the Usenet world, this group is supposed to become
"mod.computers.laser-printers". When the change was first proposed by
private mail, I expressed a concern over the renaming as it seemed to be
something that might create confusion about the relationship between the two
lists and if this is the case, it should become apparent. Second, there
have been difficulties in the past in getting the "mod" groups to all
corners of the Usenet. If it seems that the "mod" feed is reaching all the
sites formerly served by "fa", then this will not be an issue, but I'd like
to make sure of this first. Third, all the "mod" gateways are located at
ucbvax. (fa.laser-lovers has been gatewayed into the net at uw-beaver.) I
have noticed significant delays at times in how long it has taken news
articles to go from ucbvax to uw-beaver. Additionally, there have been
periods of days during which mail cannot be delivered to ucbvax because of
high loads there. It should be an interesting experiment to see if the
propagation characteristics of the messages on the list differs between the
"mod" and "fa" feeds.
Parenthetically, I am glad to see that Berkeley has taken responsibility for
gatewaying the new "mod" feeds and hope this indicates a long-term and
formal willingness on their part to commit the resources necessary to
provide this service.
A further complaint, by others, on the reorganization is that it makes life
harder for sites that are on both the Internet and the Usenet.
Unfortunately, my middle-of-the-road solution doesn't address these
problems. In fact, it makes them worse. Sorry.
While I am waxing on about administrative matters, permit me to say a few
words on the criteria I use to decide whether to forward a message to the
group or not (this is particularly relevant to the Usenet world, as one of
the claims supporting the reorganization would be that the posting process
will become less confusing for Usenet readers and hence more messages may be
submited).
In general, I pass almost every message on to the group. I do not pass on
messages that are obviously misdirected (requests from Internet people for
addition to the list, garbage generated by someone's mailer, empty messages
generated by people hitting the wrong terminal key on Usenet, etc.). I also
do not pass on messages that seem to be personal replies to the original
note's author ("please tell me what you find out", "I'm glad to see others
have had this problem", etc.). (When possible, I pass the errant note on to
its proper recipient, but this sometimes takes me some days to get around to
doing. If you are on the Usenet and you can't reach a note's author
directly, including the original person's address with your message will
help me out.) If a message asks a question that I can answer easily, I
don't forward it on (i.e., "How do I get Unix TeX") or I send it only to
people who are in a position to answer the question. More complicated
questions, or ones concerning topics I haven't been paying attention to
usually get forwarded to the list. I do not forward messages that clearly
go against Arpanet policies (e.g., advertising). When lobbied by other
readers, I will try and convince participants in a "discussion" to moderate
their statements. As a last resort, a badly out of control discussion will
be halted.
Finally, I give preference to keeping the message traffic flowing through
the list over handling administrative requests. When I'm busy,
administrative requests may take a week or two to be handled (or
occasionally longer, if I'm really swamped). Thank you for your patience.
--Rick