john@xanth.UUCP (06/12/87)
Let's move this discussion out of comp.sources.d. It's not really appropriate for news.config either, so I've set a Followup-To: news.groups on this article (and a new subject). In article <10332@decwrl.DEC.COM>, reid@decwrl.DEC.COM (Brian Reid) writes: > 1) No group reaches everyone on the net. Even the so-called "mandatory" > groups have at best 25% readership. Yes, but I think Gene was referring to sites, not users. If a number of sites all create, say, alt.sources, but don't make sure that they all have connectivity to each other, sources posted to the groups in some parts of the country won't reach other parts. This happened with net.sources recently, and with net.rec.drugs some time ago. > 2) Alternative groups are currently forced to be second-class citizens. > The periodic "checkgroup" messages flush them from time to time on > many systems. The mechanisms for moderators do not really support > a moderated alternative group. As long as you don't name your alternative groups under any of the top-level categories in the checkgroups message (and you're running 2.11 news), checkgroups could care less about them. The "inet" groups are going to be more of a problem in this regard. For moderators, you aren't restricted to just "backbone" in the mailpaths file. It will match newsgroup patterns; e.g. alt hoptoad!%s backbone seismo!%s internet %s Then hoptoad or whoever would have aliases for "alt-humor-spc" and so on. > 3) There is no reason why the alternative groups cannot use the same kind > of distribution that the mainstream groups have now: relaying. The > use of PC Pursuit and nntp makes it possible to ship alternative groups > to many places for not much money. Absolutely! Go for it. The only problem with PCP is that you can only make one call per PCP ID at any given time. We only have one ID here, and we have had nights where no mail went through due to communications with our news feed. > I think it would be nice if the mechanisms in B > News software were a little more accepting of alternative groups. Actually, 2.11 is quite flexible in this regard. The "unix-pc" people haven't been having much trouble, not to mention all the organizational newsgroups. More power to the "alt" people; hopefully this'll keep the flaming *way down* in news.groups and the like. -- John Owens Old Dominion University - Norfolk, Virginia, USA john@ODU.EDU old arpa: john%odu.edu@RELAY.CS.NET +1 804 440 4529 old uucp: {seismo,harvard,sun,hoptoad}!xanth!john