pcl (06/01/82)
One of the problems with netnews is the ease with which people can become regular users and yet not have, or even know about, the appropriate documentation. Besides the frustration that this can cause for both themselves and others (e.g. when they innocently violate certain usage conventions), it could contribute to the accidental disclosure of proprietary information (from those sites that deal in such things, like BTL). The best method I can think of to address this problem is to have the software itself alert new users to any issues of which they should be aware. Since new users are easily identifiable by either not having a .newsrc file or having one with only options line(s) in it, it should be very easy to have readnews detect this situation and take some specified action (before going on to let them read their first news). Since the "appropriate action" is site dependent, it could be specified as an installation parameter in the defs file, with the default perhaps being to simply display a file welcoming them to Usenet and telling them that documentation exists if they're willing to track it down. For the site I administer, I would include the path names of the documentation I keep on-line (including an annotated list of newsgroups), my name, and a warning about disclosure of proprietary information. If nothing like this is currently slated for release 2.7, could it be? Paul Lustgarten Bell Labs - Indian Hill
bj (06/04/82)
You could get the same effect without changing readnews. All you have to do is send an article to general and give it an expiration date in the far future. This should be the first article read by a new user and can have any information about the news system or about the computer system in general. B.J. (decvax!yale-comix!herbison) (Herbison@Yale)