jj (12/13/82)
Maybe I'm merely uninformed, but it occurs to me that the best way to construct a system is to provide for the graceful mitigation of mistakes. I would like to set forth several proposals for handling unused and mistaken newsgroups. 1) Set a time limit in the news software. Use this time limit to delete inactive groups. (Nothing new there) 2) When deleting (or rendering inactive, perhaps, would be a better word for what I would suggest) newsgroups, do NOT make them non-existant, and disallow all use of them. Instead, allow the network configurators to do one of the following: a) Put the name of inactive groups in a file. When an article is posted to one of these groups, ask the poster to confirm that s/he intends to reactivate the group. b) Forward all news recieved for that group into another, catchall, group, i.e. net.mouldy or some such. c) In the case of the inadvertantly created group, repost the article, (by control message, the same one that kills the newsgroup) into another (correct) group. Have this done automagically. d) When actually canceling an active group (Which should NEVER happen, given 1), c) and a), but pathological things will happen) put any remaining articles into another newsgroup (as indicated by the control message). This preseves any articles that were present in anomolous(sp, I know) sites, causing the minor inconvience of reading them twice (possibly, but depending on each individual.). I am presuming (probably foolhardily) that nobody will delete net.followup and send it all to net.general, or some other such mess... My reasoning for the changes above is that the network, which is currently essentially in a friendly user state, must be evolved into something that is more robust, and in less need of constant supervision. A system that allows new groups to be created would not be distastrous or foolhardy, if all the new groups that were inactive were taken out of the overhead except for the times when they were active. If one could create a new group at will, the initial proliferation would undoubtedly be bad, but the system would settle out into a steady state <I'm not proposing this, rather I would like to see some discussion for a new group name before it is created, just so everyone agrees on the name.> Anyone who wants to flame about this, go ahead, but I won't bother to answer you, I've grown tired of the constant bombast, and I will just let you argue the net into the ground. Clearly, there would have to be a VERY careful implementation of the ideas proposed here, in order to prevent netword delay from looping articles around the net, and so on, but I think that the entire question of newsgroup "proliferation" could be made moot with a little bit of automatic work on the part of the news system. As a user of several VERY quiet groups, I see this as a way to keep around groups that I may want to use on a very limited basis. One of the common misconceptions I note in the newsgroup discussion is the assumption that a group that has very little activity also has no readers. While it does seem reasonable, there are some groups, seasonal and such, that may have a wide readership and yet be inactive most of the year. Several people will undoubtedly reply to me that all these things can be done, in a sense, by human net administrator intervention. I just fail to see why a human should be troubled by something so trivial, that is so easily automated. Cherio, folks rabbit!jj the silent. (usually)