mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) (03/10/89)
In article <1736@csuna.csun.edu>, abcscagz@csuna.csun.edu (Jeff Boeing) writes: > Now, this is something I have very mixed feelings about. [reasons for unmoderating c.b.i.p deleted] > The moderated newsgroup is still a good idea, but I ask you, fellow > netters, should binaries postings be restricted to the moderated > group ONLY? An unmoderated forum (such as this one) seems to me > like a good place to vent those binaries that didn't make it (or > are delayed up the wazoo) to c.b.i.p. I realize that most of the people on the net are not in the same situation I am, but I use the UFGATE software to read news on my PC. It has two ways it can handle messages: Text, which just dumps the raw Usenet-format message in the directory you specify; and Fido, which converts the message to Fido format before importing it. Because there is a separate group for binary postings, I can designate that group as Text, and keep it from being translated. I can then designate c.b.i.p.d as Fido, and have it translated into Fido format, so it can be read normally. There's also another reason for moderating c.b.i.p that you missed: It allows all the articles to be in a common format, archived with SEA-compatable ARC, uuencoded, split up into parts, etc. This is important because a) c.b.i.p is archived. This allows an automatic archiver to do it, instead of it being done by hand; and b) Some people like to unarc the stuff on their Unix machine, to read the docs or whatever. If the posting is ZIPed, or archived with PKarc, they can't do that. Think about it: If binary postings were allowed on c.b.i.p.d, we'd probably have over a megabyte of postings each day. Moderating the binaries lets them be paced out, so sites with smaller disks don't fill up. --- Sirius 0.50 -- Marc Unangst UUCP : mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us UUCP bang : ...!uunet!sharkey!mudos!mju UUCP bang alt.: ...!{ames, rutgers}!mailrus!clip!mudos!mju Internet : mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us