ekb (11/16/82)
I don't know how many people out there in Netland know it, but within
Bell Labs there are a number of newsgroup classes around in addition
to 'net.all' and 'fa.all'. Here at machaids we get '5246.all', 'ho.all',
'nj.all', 'btl.all' and 'bell.all'. I know that there are others
around as well ('fj.all', probably also ih.all, wh.all and mh.all).
These newsgroup classes are used for two purposes:
1) To protect sensitive information from leaking out. This is the
primary purpose of the btl and bell newsgroup classes.
2) To avoid sending people articles that are of interest only to
people in a given organization or geographic area. People
outside BTL are probably not interested in the activities of
BTL clubs, nor are people outside of New Jersey interested
in nj.wanted.
This may be a good way to provide the first function, but I think
that it is an terrible way to provide the second. To effectively
provide it would require the created of zillions of new newsgroups,
most of which would see only occasional use. A few weeks back there
was a flood of articles announcing that the "Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy" was to be features on this or that local PBS radio
station. Should we have created 50 <state>.sf-lovers newsgroups
to handle them?
I would like to propose an alternate solution. There should be a
way to tag an article with a keyword to indicate who it is aimed at.
For example, an article could contain the lines:
Of-Interest-To: nj, pa
Of-Interest-To: btl
This would indicate that the article was intended for Bell Labs
sites in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Each system would have
a file containing the keywords which apply to it. Our system
might have 'nj', 'ho', 'btl5246' and 'btl' in this file. When
rnews receives an article which contained "Of-Interest-To:" lines,
it would need to match at least one keywords on each such line
before installing is in the /usr/spool/news. It should pass the
article on to it's neighboring system in any case.
I'd like to hear what you all think of this idea. Please reply
directly to me via UNIX mail. I'll summarize to the net.
- Eric Bustad (houx*!machaids!ekb)pcl (11/16/82)
I've been meaning to put this out on the net for a while, but a recent article from 'Eric' (machaids!ekb) has finally prompted me to act. The basis for Eric's suggestion is an observation that I made in this newsgroup nearly a year ago, namely, that the "topic category" (newsgroup) of an article is a quite separate piece of information from what machines the article should be sent to. Currently, the distribution of an article is controlled by the first component of the newsgroup's name, together with the 'sys' file entries for each machine. Under the current software, individual newsgroups could be given different distributions, but there is a universal convention that that first component of the newsgroup name is all that is used to determine distribution. Now, the problem with having TWO pieces of information bundled into a single newsgroup name, is that we would really like to have ALL POSSIBLE COMBINATIONS of these two pieces of information (i.e. the cross product, for you mathematical types). That is, we should be able to submit an article to some interest group (newsgroup), and INDEPENDENTLY indicate what distribution that article should receive. Under the current scheme, we put both in the newsgroup name, and end up with, for example, newsgroups 'general', 'ih.general', 'btl.general', 'bell.general', and 'net.general'. We also have 'ih.micro', 'btl.micro', and 'net.micro'. The problem Eric cites in his message (needing the effect of 'nj.sf-lovers' for announcing a local TV show) is another facet of the same problem. Proposed solution: In brief, I think the best solution to the above is to use a "To:" line to indicate the distribution (what a novel idea!), and use the "Newsgroup:" to indicate JUST the topic category. I will expand on this in my next message, describing more generally how/why news and mail should converge. Paul Lustgarten Bell Labs - Indian Hill ixn5c!pcl
mark (11/18/82)
This issue comes up every several months, kind of like grammar and foobar. There are two fundamental problems with the separation of distribution and content information. The first one is that they are not completely orthogonal. For example, "general" is very different from "net.general" and people often subscribe to one but not the other. The second problem is upward compatibility. We have a network of over 300 sites, and it is just not possible to have a sudden change in the way things get sent around. You can't update all the programs at once. There are still sites running incredibly old stuff out there. Not that there isn't merit to the idea. If there weren't it wouldn't keep coming up regularly. And solutions to these problems are invited. But as stated they just can't be implemented. Mark Horton