mike@erix.UUCP (Mike Williams) (05/24/84)
At present a heated debate is going on in Europe as to which groups should
be sent over here. The main reason for this is the fast increasing telephone
bill for trans Atlantic calls. At present the main news feed to Europe
goes via mcvax in Holland which then relays the news to many other European
countries. Mcvax shares its cost with the "back-bone" sites in the other
countries who in turn share their costs with the "end" sites. It seems clear
that with the ever increasing news flow mcvax will have to turn off certain
news groups. The main heat generated in the debate is of course which groups
this should be. As it is we don't get several groups already, and this is a
great pity. For example net.politics could promote a very interesting forum
for the exchange of international political opinion - if we got net.politics.
It would help a lot if a means could be devised so that only technical articles
and articles of international interest were sent over here. It is very
irritating when "college reunions", car sales, equipment sales, want path to...
turn up. They just cost money to transmit and this means that the news groups
to which they are sent are in danger of being turned off to Europe.
Several things have been proposed. For example call "net" "world" so that
people posting to e.g. "world.misc" would realize that their news was going
ouside the USA. Several specific "usa" newsgroups could be created. Why not
net.usa.all for these groups? Whereas I hate to propose censorship maybe we
could ask news administrators to kill all articles which are posted to
blatently inapropriate groups?
Finally I can't end this without sending a word of thanks to the people at
mcvax, decvax and philabs who keep the news (shuch as it is) flowing into
Europe.
Mike Williams, Stockholm, Sweden
mike@erix.UUCP or ...{philabs,decvax}!mcvax!enea!erix