davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (03/21/91)
I'm going to change the way stuff is queued on sixhub, and I'm
surprised that no one else suggested it, since everything else has been
criticized... Rather than unpacking archives when they reach the top of
the review queue, I will unpack them as fast as possible, both to save
my disk space and to get the word back to the submitter that the entry
got to me okay.
In over a year of waiting several weeks to unpack a submission then
sending back a message that it was damaged in mailing, not one person
has asked why I did it this way.
New way:
1. Mailbox
If all the parts arrive I send a message to that effect and move
the parts to an unpack directory.
2. Unpack
As soon as possible I uudecode and convert to standard format.
Then I send a message that the file is okay.
3. review
This is still the long queue, things get sent to reviewers, held
to see if the new version is out, backed up behind virus
programs, etc. This won't get any better.
4. Posting
This is a short queue, since it's (almost) automated. The entry
gets broken into parts and assigned a number for posting.
Entries are made in the index and summary files. The submitter
gets a last note saying it's all set to go.
This won't make things run any faster, because the output
volume is still smaller than the input volume many days, but at
least there will be faster feedback if there's a mailing problem.
--
bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
"Most of the VAX instructions are in microcode,
but halt and no-op are in hardware for efficiency"