[net.general] on the fate of the newsgroup class net.all

mark (03/23/83)

It has come to my attention that there are a large number of net
sites in Europe that have turned off net.general, because they
feel that the content of net.general is aimed at the USA.  Now
that USENET reaches overseas, it appears that we need to take a
fresh look at our network class heirarchy.  Currently we have
	net.all		(goes everywhere)
	nj.all		(for example, only in New Jersey)
	ho.all		(only within Holmdel, New Jersey)
This example is slightly artificial, because there is nothing
in the cit of Holmdel for USENET purposes except the Bell Labs building,
but it gets the point across.  We don't have a nationwide or
worldwide class of newsgroups.

I think it's time to create a new class called world.all, which goes
everywhere in the world.  We also need a usa.all for nationwide news.
(I would like to hear whether Canada wants USA based news - if they
do, it could easily be called na.all for North America.)  At that
point, we could close down net.all, replacing each newsgroup with
a version in world.all or {usa,na}.all, as appropriate.

The advantage to this change would be that people would be more aware
of where their news is going, and would have more control over it.

The disadvantage is that such a change would be monumental in scope
and might be downright impossible to carry out.  Once upon a time,
back in the early days of USENET, we renamed NET.ALL as net.all, and
it was no problem.  But the net has grown immensely since then, and
everyone ran A news.  It was easy to change a system over with A
news, since all the user subscriptions were in a central file.  Code
could be fixed to ignore case.  And traffic volume was low, so articles
that were in the net on flag day weren't a problem.

It can be done.  But it will require some special purpose software that
converts newsgroup names on the fly.  And it will require a lot of
cooperation on the network.

The alternative is to grandfather the name net.all in to mean North
America (or the USA or whatever) and add a world.all class which will
also go overseas.  The disadvantage to this is that Europe would miss
out on all of the net.all newsgroups.  (Right now they're only getting
a few anyway, due to a less-than-wonderful dialup overseas phone link.
We're looking for a better link, but so far don't have one.)

Comments on net.news.group are welcome.

	Mark Horton

cjp (03/24/83)

I have thought for a long time that the currently-implemented scheme
for attaching articles to newsgroups is inadequate.  I would like to
see developed a syntax, and appropriate software, which allows sending
news articles to the *intersection* of newsgroups in addition to the
(currently implemented) union of newsgroups.  Example syntax:
nj*news.group.  Or, if more flexibility is needed, [nj,ho]*news.group.
Users could presumably get by with the present subscription syntax.
Only those users (or systems) subscribing to all the groups named in an
intersection would have to receive the article.  Such a scheme would
simplify the implementation of geographically limited newsgroups.
It would not have to interfere with existing newsgroup names, however
it might be appropriate to change the "net.groupname" groups to "net*"
intersections with the "groupname" portions for net-wide news items.

Any comments, or ideas on how tough this would be to push through at
this late stage of net development?

	Charles J. Poirier
	decvax!mcnc!cjp