comparc@twwells.com (comp.archives) (12/26/89)
First, a bit of information: Ed Vielmetti is now reposting into
comp.archives things that describe archives and things archived.
This is with my approval. It has also increased dramatically the
amount of information in the newsgroup. (Hey Ed! Thanks! But how
are you finding all this stuff?!?)
Because of this, and because it has been nearly impossible to get
archives to register themselves, I'm changing a policy of mine.
Previously, I had not listed an archive unless I got approval from
the archive administrator.
However, I now have more outstanding requests to archive
administrators than I have listed archives!
My new policy is as follows: any archive that gets mentioned in a
newsgroup posting is now fair game for entry in my archive
database. What this means is that if you mention an archive and I
happen to see it (a good bet with Ed spotting them), I'll add it
to my database so that people can find out about it by making a
request to my server.
Unfortunately, that means that if you did *not* want your archive
widely known, you lose. If an archive administrator tells me he
wants his entry pulled or edited, I *will* do it. I will also keep
records, in order to prevent re-listing any such pulled archives.
This is the best I can do to balance the requirements of providing
the service comp.archives was supposed to serve (and which I've so
far not provided well) while not screwing over those people who
are making their archives available.
On another note: a number of people have asked me if I will be
making Ed's postings available through my server. In short: yes. I
have them all archived right now; I'll soon modify my server to
make them available. I'll post instructions in comp.archives when
I'm done.
Note that followups have been directed to comp.archives.
---
Bill { uunet | novavax | ankh | sunvice } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.com
send comp.archives postings to comp-archives@twwells.com
send comp.archives related mail to comp-archives-request@twwells.com
send comp.archives server requests to comp-archives-server@twwells.comemv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (12/28/89)
In article <1989Dec26.121345.1270@twwells.com> comparc@twwells.com (comp.archives) writes:
(Hey Ed! Thanks! But how
are you finding all this stuff?!?)
It's not too hard, really. Some of the newsgroups I just read
normally as a matter of course & notice things that way. Otherwise
if there's a group with occasional interesting things but the vast
majority of which I don't care about, a GNUS kill file works nicely.
Here's an example (from comp.ai):
(gnus-kill "" "FTP\\|^%A" "u")
(gnus-kill "Subject" ".")
(gnus-expunge "X")
loosely translated this looks for the strings 'ftp' and '%A'
in the entire text of unread messages, marks these as unread,
then marks everything else as read and hides them. Et voila,
this captures many FTP site postings and also bibliographies
in refer format.
Other groups get similar kill files, occasionally including
the name or site of a known good contributor to the group.
It took most of an evening to construct the kill files cause
I did it sort of brute force, but now things clip along nicely.
Though I haven't tried it, Brad's recently posted NewsClip(tm)
code looks like it would be amenable to the same task, though
I haven't bothered yet.
--Ed