davidson (02/06/83)
There was some talk a while ago about requiring sites to archive all locally generated netnews. I think that this is an important idea for several reasons: 1. It allows the local netnews administrators to track down any problem users (whether ignorant or irresponsible). 2. It suggests that there IS some cost to posting lots of netnews (even if the archive area is purged of old messages from time to time). 3. It reduces the burden of sites that are trying to archive all netnews, since they need only save the message headers. As for what `require' means, I have three suggestions: 1. That the next version of inews automatically store locally generated news in a directory structure identical in structure to the existing spool structure, containing links to the same files as are entered into the spool structure. 2. That when the automatic handler for answering requests for old articles fails to find such an article, it forwards the request to the netnews administrator's mailbox, to give him or her an idea of how often it is appropriate to remove old news. 3. That newnews administrators be requested to retain submitted articles for at least 1 year. -Greg
sjb (02/08/83)
As I said before when this discussion came up, you are trying to delegate what goes/stays in/out of someone else's machine. You are not talking about a trivial amount of disk space here, and I'm sure some if not most sites couldn't (indeed wouldn't) handle it.