[net.news.group] on the fate of the newsgroup class net.all

mark (03/23/83)

It has come to my attention that there are a large number of net
sites in Europe that have turned off net.general, because they
feel that the content of net.general is aimed at the USA.  Now
that USENET reaches overseas, it appears that we need to take a
fresh look at our network class heirarchy.  Currently we have
	net.all		(goes everywhere)
	nj.all		(for example, only in New Jersey)
	ho.all		(only within Holmdel, New Jersey)
This example is slightly artificial, because there is nothing
in the cit of Holmdel for USENET purposes except the Bell Labs building,
but it gets the point across.  We don't have a nationwide or
worldwide class of newsgroups.

I think it's time to create a new class called world.all, which goes
everywhere in the world.  We also need a usa.all for nationwide news.
(I would like to hear whether Canada wants USA based news - if they
do, it could easily be called na.all for North America.)  At that
point, we could close down net.all, replacing each newsgroup with
a version in world.all or {usa,na}.all, as appropriate.

The advantage to this change would be that people would be more aware
of where their news is going, and would have more control over it.

The disadvantage is that such a change would be monumental in scope
and might be downright impossible to carry out.  Once upon a time,
back in the early days of USENET, we renamed NET.ALL as net.all, and
it was no problem.  But the net has grown immensely since then, and
everyone ran A news.  It was easy to change a system over with A
news, since all the user subscriptions were in a central file.  Code
could be fixed to ignore case.  And traffic volume was low, so articles
that were in the net on flag day weren't a problem.

It can be done.  But it will require some special purpose software that
converts newsgroup names on the fly.  And it will require a lot of
cooperation on the network.

The alternative is to grandfather the name net.all in to mean North
America (or the USA or whatever) and add a world.all class which will
also go overseas.  The disadvantage to this is that Europe would miss
out on all of the net.all newsgroups.  (Right now they're only getting
a few anyway, due to a less-than-wonderful dialup overseas phone link.
We're looking for a better link, but so far don't have one.)

Comments on net.news.group are welcome.

	Mark Horton

thomas (03/24/83)

Instead of making all these different news groups, what happened to the
proposal to tag each article with a "group" and a "distribution"?  That
makes much more sense to me.  Then, instead of having groups sf-lovers,
nj.sf-lovers, usa.sf-lovers, na.sf-lovers, and world.sf-lovers (just to
pick a random example), you would have a single group sf-lovers, with
differing distributions ("local", "nj", "usa", "na", and "world").  All
the news in the group would be presented together, and you wouldn't
have to remember if the group "nj.sf-lovers" (for example) were already
created (assuming that "sf-lovers" exists) when attempting to post a
message.  Specifying what to forward to another site might get a little
more complex, but how often do you edit the sys file as opposed to how
often you read or post news?  Also, you would like to be able to say in
your .newsrc that you, for example, only want local news on that
machine.  If we're going to upheave everything, we should seriously
consider the merits of the current scheme vs all other contenders.

(Note that this is easy to map to and from the current scheme at
gateways to old news programs.)

=Spencer

alb (03/24/83)

I do not think it would be practical to try and convert net.all
to other categories, for the mere reason that Mark states that
it would be a tremendous upheaval.  We no longer have the coordination
and cooperation among the net sites that we once had.  Sort of
like the days without communication.  Remember when Andrew Jackson
(was it he?) continued to attack the British for two weeks after
peace was declared because he never heard about it?  That's the
kind of situation that we have now.

cjp (03/24/83)

I have thought for a long time that the currently-implemented scheme
for attaching articles to newsgroups is inadequate.  I would like to
see developed a syntax, and appropriate software, which allows sending
news articles to the *intersection* of newsgroups in addition to the
(currently implemented) union of newsgroups.  Example syntax:
nj*news.group.  Or, if more flexibility is needed, [nj,ho]*news.group.
Users could presumably get by with the present subscription syntax.
Only those users (or systems) subscribing to all the groups named in an
intersection would have to receive the article.  Such a scheme would
simplify the implementation of geographically limited newsgroups.
It would not have to interfere with existing newsgroup names, however
it might be appropriate to change the "net.groupname" groups to "net*"
intersections with the "groupname" portions for net-wide news items.

Any comments, or ideas on how tough this would be to push through at
this late stage of net development?

	Charles J. Poirier
	decvax!mcnc!cjp

rick (03/24/83)

Why not just create na.all groups and encourage people with
north-america specific stuff to submit it to na.whatever .  Then we could
just berate anybody who submits anything to net.all that shouldn't
go to europe ???

I need not point out that the net is very good at berating people who
are foolish enough to go against its etiquite. (Need I ???)

For completeness sake, there should probably be usa.all groups too.

This would require no conversion effort, and keep net.all for what it
was intended, namely stuff that is important to everybody.

smb (03/25/83)

I agree with Jerry Schwarz's suggestion that net.general be abolished.
It's largely confused with net.misc anyway, plus it's led to the
net.followup hack.  'general' was originally intended for local administrative
use, for a fairly light traffic load.  It's hard to see what would be of
interest to everyone on the net.

		--Steve

george (03/25/83)

I think that two different issues are being confused.
One is the content and intended distribution of net.general
and other groups.
The other being that only a small portion of net.general
actually is exchanged worldwide.

It is intended that most (avid) Usenet readers subscribe
to "net.general".
"Net.general" is not intended solely for U.S.A. or N.A.
[I am assuming that the English language is not the issue.]
There are often articles inappropriately posted
to this group.  That is a different problem
which affects all of us, not only the Europeans.
Many other groups may have an abundance of articles
that would be less interesting to Europeans.

If the problem is the expense of transmission to Europe
or poor quality phone connections, then magnetic tape
could be a solution.
Tapes might be exchanged several times a week
between continents, N.A., Europe, and Australia.
These should be shipped (i.e. air freight),
rather than mailed via the government sponsored bottlenecks.
A new group, say "net.urgent", could be created
for articles urgent enough to require phone transmission
within hours, rather than tape transmission within days.
An "urgent" header entry would probably be more appropriate
than a newsgroup, but newsgroups are easier to create
and support netwide.

If a major link in U.S.A. breaks for more than one or two days
a similar mechanism might be used either to replace it temporarily
or to help it catch up when it reactivates.


		George Rosenberg

stevenm (03/25/83)

My feeling is that the best solution is to attempt to redefine the
content of 'net.general'. Off the top of my head, I can't recall what
it is that's NA specific, but perhaps we should keep an eye out
for such things, and ban them from net.general. I would think that the
normal run of "does anyone have this {driver|tool|info}" would still
be intersting to Europe.

I realize that this is the laissez-faire approach to dealing with this
problem, but the idea of a big change in the network naming conventions
rattles me. Recall that when we changed from NET.ALL to net.all:

	1) the software converted automatically
	2) the change was **case** only, not content
	3) the net was about 1/10th the current size
	4) the process took many months, with many recriminations
		flying back and forth
	5) explaining to my users why the case change was so important
		caused me to tell many white lies

So, I am against changing the top-level 'net' nomenclature. I am in
favor of redefining what goes in it. I have always wanted a
"technical-only" network. Perhaps this is a good time to introduce the
technical vs. non-technical dichotomie.

(Not afraid to be reactionary)

S. McGeady

mark (03/25/83)

Re: keyword schemes:  this has been proposed many times before, but never
followed through on.  I personally don't have the time and don't see a
straightforward way to do it and keep all the current functionality.
I do think it can be done, but I'm not convinced that it can without
a flag day where the whole net must convert at once.  If someone wants
to put the energy into it to make it work, great.

Re: moving discussions wholesale from net.foo to na.foo: this would be
silly.  Each newsgroup would have to decide if it wanted to move.  My
guess is that only a few newsgroups would move, such as net.tv.  (This
assumes that "net.all" continues to exist, with some semantics, either
as a synonym for world.all or for na.all.)

Re: abolishing net.general: wait a minute, folks.  Just because something
is misused doesn't mean it should be abolished.  If I have an important
announcement that I want everyone on the net to read, where would I put it?
Perhaps we need to rename it, or moderate it, but abolish it?  No way!

The sentiment I seem to be seeing is this:

	We should create world.all and na.all

	We leave current net.all newsgroups there and generally encourage
	sites to get them worldwide.

	We discourage net.general in favor of na.general or world.general
	(or world.everyone or whatever)

	We make use of the new Distribution keyword for local announcements,
	e.g. someone with an announcement of a Sci-Fi bookstore in New Jersey
	could post
		Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
		Distribution: nj
	which would go only to nj.all.  This is similar to the keyword
	concept (although not as clean and really using newsgroups instead
	of keywords) but is reasonably upward compatible.

Should postnews prompt for a distribution line?  This would make the "net."
prefix almost meaningless noise.

	Mark

furuta (03/26/83)

Sorry, I don't agree that world.all and na.all should be created.  I
think that just adds another layer of complexity to the naming scheme
for news groups.  It's already bad enough hearing arguments intended to
convince a person that their new group should be named net.usoft.foo
rather than net.foo.  And inevitably, once the name gets named, someone
else suggests that the name should be changed to something more
"logical."  I think the current setup where the European gateway simply
decides that it doesn't want to receive (for example) net.tv, is just
fine.  If you want to make sure people realize what groups are going
where, just have the Europeans post a message every now and then
listing the groups they do and don't receive.

bstempleton (03/27/83)

The world group should definately be world.everybody and not world.general.

As for distribution codes - this is something that I suggested quite some
time ago and it is about time it showed up.   There are a few mechanical
things to be worked out, but I think it can be done.   In addition, as a
small step twoards keyword news, I think it would be nice to attach the
idea of keywords to current netnews.   These would be things that essentially
would act like newsgroups, but they could only be put on an article in addition
to a newsgroup (never on their own).  They would thus have no overhead on
a typical news system, needing no directory or entry in any file etc.
This way people can put keywords on net.misc articles etc. and people can
put them in their subscription list.

One main purpose for keywords could be this:  For each article posted to the
net, inews should actually insist the user provide one of a certain set
of keywords namely: original_information, informational_reply,
request_for_information, flame, opinion

That way peole could say - I don't want to see any followups that are opinion,
or I don't want to see the 100th answer to that question of what foo_bar
means by not wanting informational_reply keywords.   We could expand the class
but I think you get the idea.