wapd (11/23/82)
Why all the fuss about killing newsgroups ? What is the cost of a newsgroup that has been idle for 2 months ? Do all of the articles expire and get removed ? If some administrators want to clean things up on their machines, why don't they just refuse to accept or forward the groups that they consider "dead" ? Bill Dietrich houxj!wapd
trb (11/23/82)
Please don't suggest that adminsitrators stop forwarding or receiving certain groups. The life of netnews relies on the fact that all sites forward newsgroups. When one site refuses to forward some group, the lack of consideration radiates outward from that site to cripple many other sites. Let's say that you are interested in microprocessors, but Brian Redman (harpo!ber) thinks that they're toys. He stops forwarding groups which contain microprocessor info and many many sites stop getting microprocessor news (for no apparent reason, if Brian is inconsiderate enough). Trying to find newsgroup transmission problems in a net can be excruciatingly painful, having to cope with the whims of power wielding administrators is something I don't look forward to. I wish people would stop trying to force their morals and wills and opinions on other people (this is presenting, not forwarding netnews to people who want it is forcing. Keep your flames). I'll continute forward all the news to my netnews neighbors. Andy Tannenbaum Bell Labs Whippany, NJ (201) 386-6491
sjb (11/23/82)
Ah, but dead newsgroups DO amount to extra overhead.: 1) Their directories take up i-nodes 2) Their directories take up space 3) Their presence on the active file only makes news's search through that file take that much longer, and the search is slow enough as it is. Why keep deadweight around? Also, not many people realize this, but there IS a limit to the number of groups you can have. Once your .newsrc file gets to contain too many lines (one for each group), you can't read news any more.
goutal (11/23/82)
On the subtopic of refusing to support newsgroups one doesn't like,
my two cents:
1) I don't want to have it made harder for me to not see what I don't
want to see. I.e. I don't believe in the "type n" approach to cen-
sorship -- If Andy wants to do it that way, it's okay with me, but just
so's I don't have to read all those headers only to decide not to read
them anyway, or worse (from my point of view), wading through the headers,
deciding on the basis of the subject line (and maybe the author) that it's
something I'd like to read, and being unpleasantly surprised. I'd say
keep the extra newsgroups like net.jokes.q (or whatever it's called these
days) on the theory that if there is a place for such things, most people
will use it, but if it's not there nobody can use it. In general, the
more newsgroups there are, the easier it is for me to pre-screen what I
have to wade through to read the stuff I WANT out of this net -- technical
info and experiences of the usefulness of computers to people. (Gak! did
I REALLY run a sentence on for six lines straight up there? Sorry.)
2) Yup, the whole nature of this network, or at least the news part of
it really falls apart if people start to arbitrarily refuse to for-
ward newsgroups they don't like. I don't know the mechanics of it, but if
there are some economies to be had by suppressing newsgroups locally while
still forwarding them to other sites, then I think that's a valid option;
but refusing to forward "just cuz" is NOT valid.
3) On the other hand, each machine in this network is owned by SOMEbody,
and that somebody, I would think, has the right to decide how to use
their own resources. So, if a machine has limited resources (as many of
our newer, smaller sites do), I can hardly blame them for using some sort
of rule to decide which groups they can afford to support and which they
can't. Again, I don't know whether there is anything to be gained by not
supporting a group locally if at the same time you forward it. Anyhow, I
wish more people would remember that just because a machine is on the net
(i.e. receives net.general) does not automatically give everyone else on
the net the right to decide how the owners of that machine should spend
their money. I suppose what this means is that those machines who can't
or won't support all the junk that roams this net should just be end nodes
and not pretend to be routing nodes.
Did you try to find the overall conclusion in my above ramblings?
Did you fail? Good. I'm not wholly on one side or another, except per-
haps in favour of individual and sites' rights. I don't want to prevent
anyone from saying whatever they feel like saying (1st Amendment), but I
will surely appreciate any effort made so that I don't have to listen to
it if I don't want to, without requiring me to have my ears cut off.
Er, well, yes, I rambled... typing on the fly, you know.
Many thanks for your patience. Anyone who wishes to reply by mail is
welcome to do so.
-- Kenn (decvax!)goutal