avi@pegasus.UUCP (Avi E. Gross) (03/02/84)
I hear all these suggestions for making top-level groups like sci(ence) and
cs and ent and .... I agree that many other topologies would lead to an
easier, and more consistent, way of doing things.
I would like to bring up the age old taboo again. Why don't we just totally
get rid of the "net" uppermost domain? It has absolutely no reason for
existence, now that the "distribution" feature is available. Rather than
having something strange like "net.comp.cs.crypt", we can shorten it by
four characters. On my machine (in the att.subdomain), I have newsgroups
like att.general and ho.general and nj.general and abi.general and oms.general
and just plain general. These are all taking up room in the active file and
all have their own subdirectories. In other words, we have SEVEN general
groups.
I would like to propose that we consider making the upheaval a bit more
dramatic. Change all groups to be controlled by the Distribution field.
Then, fix postnews/inews so that the default distribution is always local,
unless the user specifies usa, or na, or net or nj or .... This way, you
have to think about where things go at all times. When a followup is done,
it too should prompt you for a distribution, and recommend that the
distribution be no larger than the original note. The software could just
strip any prefixes like "net" off the front of any newsgroup names, for a
while.
There are some problems with this. A method must be available to allow you
to send to a Union or Intersection of domains. For example, I may want to
send something to nj AND att. An additional problem is how a user can
specify (on a per-group basis) what they want to receive. If they want just
(att.something and nj.something) and not (na.something and na.something),
how could you specify that in your .newsrc? I would suggest that your
.newsrc would by default have a format of:
"news.group[:!] {article numbers} [:!] {distributions}"
Where the default distribution is "all" and can be left out. The [:!] would
have the usual meaning of turning the group (or distribution list) on or off.
Please pass any comments directly to news.group.
--
-=> Avi E. Gross @ AT&T Information Systems Laboratories (201) 576-6241
suggested paths: [ihnp4, allegra, cbosg, hogpc, ...]!pegasus!avialb@alice.UUCP (Adam L. Buchsbaum) (03/02/84)
We can't rely on the Distribution field so much, merely because not all sites run software which supports it (unfortunately). Now, don't give me the argument, ''Well, that's their fault; if they're not going to keep up to date, to hell with them.'' It may be a reasonable argument (yes, I believe everyone should run current software), but if we are going to make such a major upheaval, we simply have to make sure that the entire net will still run. If we rely on Distribution, the simple fact is that it won't. As for the huge topic reorganization, I am against it. The incredible confusion and disarray it would cause outways the supposed benefits. A major reorg like that would only serve to confuse matters and make things worse, yes worse, and dirtier than they are now. What we have to do is just make sure that new groups are (1) actually needed and (2) put in the right place. If we organize from here on, we can bear the slight disorganization that we now have. Sometimes it's better to live with a little mess than to make a bigger one by scrubbing too hard. Adam
chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (03/02/84)
I agree with ``let's get rid of net.xyz in favor of
Newsgroups: xyz
Distribution: net''
I also like the idea of having readnews say
------------------
Newsgroup: foo.bar (Discussion of bar as related to foo, except on Tuesdays)
------------------
-- at least once (more often may be too annoying, especially to
those of us who sometimes use 300 baud).
I also think that reorganizing the newsgroup structure would be
helpful, but I don't think it can be done without much pain --
**unless** there were a "rename group" control message.
So let's get a news 2.11, with the rename control message and
"correct" (whatever that is) "Distribution:" handling and the new
"this group is for whatever" explanation for first-time readers;
shortly afterward, send out rename messages (several of them, from
all backbone sites, just in case), and *pouf* (cloud of greasy
black smoke), everything will be neatly rearranged.
"But," you ask, "what about the sites that don't convert to 2.11?"
Well, everything will be OK up until the groups are all renamed.
At that point, unless 2.11 has an AUTONEWNG option, these people
will have to actually *create* the net.* groups just to post (and
receive) anything. This will probably be such a pain that most of
them will convert instead.
In other words, I'm saying *don't write code for AUTONEWNG in 2.11*.
It can be reinstalled in a later version (2.11.1?) if it seems
necessary. Actually I'd think that a "list of active newsgroups
at the time this version of news was made" would be more appropriate;
people could set up an initial version of the active file from that
(or better yet get it from their news feed site).
One last thought: will 2.10 pass unknown control messages along?
If not, my suggested method won't work.
--
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci
UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris.umcp-cs@CSNet-Relayka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist) (03/08/84)
If you eliminate "net." from newsgroup names and rely on the "Distribution:" line to control distribution, the problem is that you loose the ability to create newsgroups that aren't net-wide. There are reasons for creating groups which only exist within a subdomain of the net. Some of the newsgroups we get include att.3b for discussion of the 3B20S processor, att.compete for discussing what the competition is doing, and btl.cc.all for various comp center bulletins. I don't think it would be reasonable to create any of these groups on a netwide basis. Kenneth Almquist