allbery@uunet.UU.NET (Brandon S. Allbery - comp.sources.misc) (05/22/89)
Posting-number: Volume 7, Administrivia 1 Submitted-by: allbery@uunet.UU.NET (Brandon S. Allbery) Archive-name: v7welcome [comp.sources.misc is now officially on UUNET. !!!PLEASE!!! stop sending comp.sources.misc-related mail to me on ncoast! The aliases on ncoast will disappear on 6/1/89. The only important change is that I've dropped the possibility of testing submissions. Maybe someday I'll have a local Internet account so I can get on here daily and test stuff; until then, forget it. Aside from that, I've altered the wording the bit, but nothing important. ++bsa] This is the first of two messages comprising the periodic Welcome! posting for comp.sources.misc. Hopefully, any questions you have will be answered here; if they are not, send mail to me (comp-sources-misc-request@<backbone>), the moderator. This message is the Welcome! document, which describes my policies and commitments. The second part of this posting is the Index for the newsgroup; archive requests are best handled by specifying the Archive-Name or volume/issue number for the posting, or alternatively my Message-ID. Please do NOT use the article number within the newsgroup: this varies based on lost messages or articles received out of sequence, and is purely local. > Introduction < Comp.sources.misc is sort of a "catch-all" sources group. The intent is that small sources, non-Un*x sources for which no newsgroup exists, and sources which the moderators of comp.sources.unix and comp.sources.games will not accept can be sent here. This does not mean that large Un*x sources will not be accepted, but they will probably gain a wider distribution if they are sent to comp.sources.unix. They also slow down the flow of sources through this newsgroup, as they are processed and posted separately. As a result, the group will be run in an informal fashion. In general, *any* program source code will be accepted, but discussion will be routed to comp.sources.d and "sources wanted" requests to comp.sources.wanted, rather than cluttering this newsgroup. (Please do not send either to me, they don't belong here.) This newsgroup isn't expected to be a high-volume one, since the "big" stuff should be sent elsewhere. However, it is to be hoped that people still have the desire to post their favorite prompt generators, integer square root algorithms, etc. (If the last days of net.sources are any indication, they do.) > Why moderated? < The moderated comp.sources.misc replaced the unmoderated net.sources in May 1987. This was done by the Usenet backbone in response to the observed fact that net.sources was largely NON-sources by number of articles. Mail I have received indicates that the majority of people are willing to trade the small delays (mainly caused by network delays in mail) for having a source group that isn't full of noise. As stated above, the only reason a submission will be rejected is if it is a non-source. I, as the moderator, am striving to get things out as quickly as possible while not posting non-sources; testing is not done. If it's something that's worth testing, it probably belongs in comp.sources.unix instead. (Send submissions to comp-sources-unix@<backbone> in that case.) > What sources are posted here? < I will post directly any sources: little stuff like "my favorite dice-roll program" or etc., non-Un*x sources, as well as the standard stuff. In particular, I have made arrangements to handle VMS sources, and I have a program to create VMS DCL "shar" files. Please consider sending larger postings to comp.sources.unix, and games to comp.sources.games. Large Un*x sources are not tested, in order to enhance throughput. If you think it should be tested, then you want to send it to comp.sources.unix. Really. Shareware and copyrighted sources are NOT welcome in comp.sources.unix. I regret this, since it makes my life harder as the moderator who accepts everything; I must arrange to post them, and I may end up having to test them to compensate for their unacceptability in the "proper" newsgroup. Still, they *do* at least see the light of day eventually. (It may be preferable to send these and other sources to the unmoderated group alt.sources in the original "alt" hierarchy [see the "Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies" document in ews.groups]. Be warned, however, that the "alt" subnet does not yet have as complete a distribution as the mainstream Usenet.) > Guidelines for fast processing of submissions < The readers of this newsgroup would prefer that posters follow certain guidelines. Not following these guidelines may result in long delays, since some things *must* be fixed for news to accept the submission, and others fixed so that I can spend time processing submissions rather than responding to flames. ;-) * Do NOT send me uuencoded "arc" files, even of sources. It's bad enough that I am expected to "shar" postings for people; I am not here to babysit for people who won't read the rules. UUENCODED ARC'ED OR COMPRESSED POSTINGS WILL BE REJECTED. * Please use "shar", "cshar", "bundle", etc. to package files. Preferably, use cshar or mkshar: these guard against mangling by older news programs, Bitnet mailers, etc. I must repack non-shar'ed submissions so that they have a better chance of surviving older mail/news systems and inter-network interfaces to Bitnet, etc. * PLEASE INCLUDE A Subject: HEADER!!! Certain large postings in the past arrived sans Subject: line; this requires me to edit the messages and add subject lines for both inews and the archive list. * Please do not address submissions to ncoast!allbery; comp.sources.misc no longer lives on ncoast, so your submissions will have to be forwarded -- which causes additional delays, as I have to strip the forwarding from the messages manually on UUNET. * The proper submission address for ANY moderated newsgroup is of the form: newsgroup-name@backbone-site The newsgroup name uses hyphens as separators, not periods (sendmail does not appreciate the periods); "comp-sources-misc" is an example. Backbone sites are the major news feeds (excepting att.att.com, which does not pass mail) which serve large areas. (No, ncoast isn't one. (Yet.) UUNET is.) Be warned that some backbone sites may use "sources-misc" instead of "comp-sources-misc"; there was some confusion about it at the inception of comp.sources.misc. Newsgroup-related mail that is *not* a submission should be sent to the same address as above, with "-request" added to the newsgroup name; for example, "comp-sources-misc-request@uunet.uu.net". Please do not send them to the submission address *or* to any of my mailboxes. Please do NOT send sources to *any* of my regular mailboxes. This will cause possibly long delays while I reroute the mail to the proper address (which may well be on another machine). Note that since ncoast's free disk space is never large, it is possible for large submissions sent to my mailbox on ncoast to be lost along with any other submissions or ordinary news and mail traffic. * Please do not package binaries and sources in the same submission. Since I must send out the binaries separately, this results in a delay while I break apart the shar and rebuild it, then resubmit the binaries separately. * One way to solve the problem of an announcement not going out the same day as the posting it announces: send the announcement to me UNDER SEPARATE COVER (see the previous guideline) with instructions as to where it should be posted, and I will insure that both go out the same day. The same goes for binaries and/or other material associated with a source; send it under separate cover and tell me what to do with it. > Archiving < UUNET is now (at least, for the moment) an archive site, so the contents of this newsgroup all the way back to July 1987 ar available. (Nothing earlier was archived or was even assigned archiving information.) I add archive headers to posted submissions, suitable for manual or automatic archiving and archive retrieval. The archive Index is posted each month as part of the Welcome! posting; it should follow this posting. The format of the archive header is: Comp.sources.misc: Volume 2, Issue 45 for submissions, and Comp.sources.misc: Volume 2, Administrivia 2 for administrivia. Each posting also has an Archive-Name, which is a single word of (generally) 6-8 letters which tries to be somewhat descriptive. You may want to use this instead of the volume/issue number. > The Oz Connection < As with the other moderated sources groups, Australia has a sub-moderator to handle the local load; this reduces bills and increases both speed and the chances of your submission actually making it out onto the net. The sub- moderator is john@basser.cs.su.oz.au. > Other Information < The list of archive sites is included with the Index, in the next posting. > Policy Changes < Most of these have been discussed above, but I'm laying them out here for easy reference. * Submissions not packaged with "shar" will be detained until I can wrap them up with a suitable "shar" program. This can be a significant delay if I'm busy. * Sources ARE NOT tested, to avoid posting delays. If it should be tested, send it to comp.sources.unix. If it's shareware or otherwise unacceptable for that newsgroup, you can request for me to test it, but it'll be delayed. * I now have a way of insuring unique archive names. I haven't fed the list of old archive-names to it yet, so there may be a few duplications in future volumes -- although I'll do my best to avoid them. * Sending submissions to my mailboxes on ncoast, uunet, or elsewhere is NOT a good, fast, or even safe way to get them posted. PLEASE use the correct address as discussed above. ++Brandon, your friendly neighborhood comp.sources.misc moderator.