[comp.sys.apollo] Internet Bandwidth

SRFERGU@ERENJ.BITNET (Scott Ferguson) (12/19/89)

I think it would be more proper for those with large numbers of problems
to send them in one long message, thus saving time on the internet, as well
as making them all easier to get through instead of wading through
hundreds of lines of message headers.

Anyone else care to comment?
Scott Ferguson

lori@hacgate.scg.hac.com (Lori Barfield) (12/19/89)

In article <8912181633.AA12104@umix.cc.umich.edu> SRFERGU@ERENJ.BITNET (Scott Ferguson) writes:
>
>I think it would be more proper for those with large numbers of problems
>to send them in one long message, thus saving time on the internet, as well
>as making them all easier to get through instead of wading through
>hundreds of lines of message headers.
>
>Anyone else care to comment?

I disagree.  If a message header says "Multifarious and Sundry Questions,"
how are you going to know to 'n' past it without reading the whole darn
thing?  Then what if the discussion goes in three different directions?

I think even tiny questions on unrelated topics should be posted
individually, so we can read all the messages we want in a given day's
crop, then 'c' the rest away.  Also, sometimes trivial issues become
meaty discussions, and if they start out under an inappropriate or
nebulous Subject:, then one could miss an enlightening debate.

I do suggest, however, that SR9-specific issues have SR9 in the
Subject: so SR10 people can kill these out.  Also, Unix- or Aegis-
specific topics might also contain those keywords in the Subject:.
And if DN10k-type discussions have that in the header, the rest of
us Motorola-bound admins can just disregard.

I say put this info in the Subject: because kill files work lots
faster when that's the only place they have to look, and a quick
scan of the Subject: lines is what I do first when I log in.

For me, it's not the number of messages, but getting to the right
ones quickly.


...lori

paul@CAEN.ENGIN.UMICH.EDU (paul killey) (12/22/89)

	
There is something to be said for putting things together in fewer messages
to this list.   Especially in that this is not a formal bug reporting
channel to apollo.

On the other hand, people should feel that they have the latitude to make their
own decision about how they want to present material here.  Understanding
that they may hear back from recipients, etc.

(Bland enough? -:))

From the standpoint of this mailing list, I have decrufted it quite a
bit (getting rid
of broken addresses and trying to be much more prompt about requests
to apollo-request)  so there weren't a lot of bounces.  But there are always
two or three VMS machines where a recipient has used all their disk space
and the message couldn't be delivered.

--paul