rgreeneb@ricevm1.rice.edu (Bob Greene) (02/07/90)
First, let me apologize for the rash of Sunspots digests/postings that have been sent out in the last 3 days or so. I have been "flushing" all the old Sunspots postings that were queued to be posted in a quick manner so that I could begin a new system of posting. The new system will be as follows: Sunspots postings will be processed on a daily basis, and each days worth of postings will be directed back to the Usenet group comp.sys.sun without the delay of waiting for the reflected mailing list digest to be filled. This means that the Usenet side will no longer see "complete" digests posted in one bunch, but rather will see several bursts in each digest. The Usenet posts will still be flagged with the Digest volume and number however, for ease of retrieval from the Sunspots archives. Please note that comp.sys.sun will remain moderated and each message will still be reviewed prior to posting, only the posting rate will be affected. The mailing list (digest form) will be relatively unaffected by this except that the digest will contain a new field 'X-Article' which will reflect the order in which the articles within the digest were posted to comp.sys.sun. Note that the *order* of articles in the digest version and comp.sys.sun may be different; however, the contents will be the same. The previous system held articles until 20k worth had accumulated in that particular digest, this will no longer be the case. To give Digest format readers a "relatively quick" turn-around rate, each Digest will be "published" at least once weekly (unless there are no submissions during that week :)). Of course, if 20k accumulates in less than a week, then that category will be published as soon as 20k accumulates. I think this will do a lot to speed up things on the Usenet side and help to restrain the recent rash of flames that has broken out over turnaround rate on that side. I'm already a day or two behind so, I'll cut this short. As usual, I welcome any comments or criticisms that you might have about Sunspots. Please feel free to write to me at my electronic address below if the need arises. Bob Greene Sunspots (comp.sys.sun) Moderator RGREENEB@RICEVM1.BITNET ONCS, Information Services, Rice University RGREENEB@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU Houston, Texas, USA ...psuvax1!rice!ricevm1!rgreeneb