webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber) (08/05/87)
In article <499@wolf.UUCP>, billw@wolf.UUCP (Bill Wisner) writes: > And people are yelling at Chuq for a hundred K, every three months? > > A quick check just confirmed that the moderator of comp.binaries.amiga > and comp.sources.amiga is stamping every article with a four week expiration. > At the time of this writing, 119K of files are present in those two groups > that would have been expired by now. Actually, long expires sound like a great idea. If I put them on all of my messages, then I wouldn't have to quote myself in follow ups nor spend time repeating in private mail the contents of messages posted months ago :-) But seriously folks, why should anyone outside a particular machine be able to influence the expiration policies of a particular machine. The size of the Usenet flow is 2 megabyte-days. A 33 kilobyte-months (assuming that 100k over 3 months means 33k persisting for any given month) equals 1 megabyte-day in disk storage costs. Although I quite enjoy OtherRealms, I wouldn't keep it online longer than any other messages. It would be nice to specify that it get backed up on tape or hardcopy before expiring it though, but that can be said of most of Usenet. Doubtless from time to time I will miss an issue, but the world is large and there is alot to read so it is really no big deal to miss an issue (I still haven't read the November 1982 issue of Locus either). ------ BOB (webber@aramis.rutger.edu ; rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!webber)
rsk@j.cc.purdue.edu (Whitewater Wombat) (08/06/87)
In article <499@wolf.UUCP>, billw@wolf.UUCP (Bill Wisner) writes: > A quick check just confirmed that the moderator of comp.binaries.amiga > and comp.sources.amiga is stamping every article with a four week expiration. > At the time of this writing, 119K of files are present in those two groups > that would have been expired by now. The moderator of these two groups is Craig Norborg, doc@j.cc.purdue.edu. I'm his boss, and news administrator to boot. I have (prior to reading this article in fact) issued cancel messages for all the articles in those groups that I could find which were over two weeks old, and have instructed Craig to use the default expiration parameters only. -- Rich Kulawiec, rsk@j.cc.purdue.edu, j.cc.purdue.edu!rsk PUCC News Administrator
webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber) (08/07/87)
In article <5092@j.cc.purdue.edu>, rsk@j.cc.purdue.edu (Whitewater Wombat) writes: > The moderator of these two groups is Craig Norborg, doc@j.cc.purdue.edu. > I'm his boss, and news administrator to boot. I have (prior to reading > this article in fact) issued cancel messages for all the articles in those > groups that I could find which were over two weeks old, and have instructed > Craig to use the default expiration parameters only. > -- > Rich Kulawiec, rsk@j.cc.purdue.edu, j.cc.purdue.edu!rsk > PUCC News Administrator When earlier this summer I indicated a willingness to post into moderated news groups, I was assured by a large number of people that the news streams controlled by moderators were sacred trusts and that eternal damnation awaited anyone who tampered with them. His usage of the Expire facility was completely in line with all policy on same that we have heard in this group. Your description of your position in the above quote seems to boil down to you justifying your tampering with a moderated news stream purely on the basis of ``might makes right.'' Is this the full extent of your position or is there something I am missing? ----- BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!webber) p.s., Would you be interested in giving Chuq Von Rospach an account on your mamam, a8
rsk@s.cc.purdue.edu (Whitewater Wombat) (08/09/87)
In article <317@brandx.rutgers.edu> webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber) writes: >In article <5092@j.cc.purdue.edu>, rsk@j.cc.purdue.edu (Whitewater Wombat) writes: >> The moderator of these two groups is Craig Norborg, doc@j.cc.purdue.edu. >> I'm his boss, and news administrator to boot. I have ... instructed >> Craig to use the default expiration parameters only. >Your description of your position in the above quote seems to boil >down to you justifying your tampering with a moderated news stream purely >on the basis of ``might makes right.'' Is this the full extent of your >position or is there something I am missing? You're missing one hell of a lot. *Your* description of your position seems to imply that I can't tell someone who works for me what to do (within reasonable bounds). I'm sorry if you don't like it, but you don't have to--the decision has been made and it is going to stick. [It has been pointed out to me that some sites archive-on-expire, and that the cancel messages I sent will cause the lossage of a few articles, resulting in slightly increased mail traffic as those few sites catch up by getting some of the articles from the moderator. I don't anticipate that to be too much of a problem, as I estimate the number of sites that archive to be a much much smaller number than the number of sites that receive the *.amiga groups.] Let me point out that I am *correcting* a sort of "tampering"--i.e., the use of explicit [long] expiration dates to cause *.amiga articles to hang around much longer than articles in other moderated source groups. [Not that I really like the use of the word "tampering" in this context, but what the hell.] If *you* want these articles around for a long time, then *you* can archive them at your site. Now, this may seem like "might makes right"--and maybe it is. Frankly, I don't really care what you think of that approach--this isn't your site, it's *mine*, and I'll decide what emanates from these machines, thank you very much. That means that I do things like cancelling outbound articles when I notice someone avoiding the "quoted text limit" or posting to wildly inappropriate newsgroups or doing other not-so-terrific things. I do this because I have the time (usually) and because I'd like to think that articles coming from *.cc.purdue.edu adhere somewhat to the guidelines posted in news.announce.newusers. I'd like to think that we're reasonably good "neighbors" on Usenet, and that we don't spew trash all over the network. [Please note, censorship paranoids, that I have never cancelled an article because of content.] Finally, let me conclude by noting that I don't really care what *you* think of my position; I care about what Gene and Chuq and Mark and Greg and John and some other folks out there think, because (1) I value their experience with Usenet, and (2) respect the work they've put into it. I hardly think you qualify on either count. -- Rich Kulawiec, rsk@j.cc.purdue.edu, j.cc.purdue.edu!rsk PUCC News Administrator