tp@mccall.com (07/17/90)
[This is cross posted to reach people who might actually know the answer.] I have some questions about the Archive-name: pseudo-header. By way of context, I post stuff to vmsnet.sources, both my own, and for people without access to the group (and will be posting more stuff very soon). vmsnet.sources is an UNmoderated sources group. It has been suggested to me that I should use Archive-name: headers in these postings. It has been suggested recently in one or more of alt.sources.d and comp.sources.d that EVERYONE should use this header in source postings. I could hack up the tools I use to include this info if it is really of any use to anyone, which is what I'm trying to determine. 1) Is this really going to do anyone any good in an unmoderated sources group? There obviously won't be any posting-number headers, since there is nobody to assign the numbers. The info files for the moderated groups state that the posting number header is for use by automatic archiving programs. So is the archive-name header. Will these programs work in the absence of a posting-number header? 2) Is anyone archiving vmsnet.sources anyway, or is this all academic at this point? As far as I know, the automatic archivers that use this info only run under unix. Are there really unix sites archive vmsnet.sources? If so, are the archives accessible? (Nobody has yet volunteered to archive vmsnet.sources.) 3) Would anyone archive vmsnet.sources if most of the postings did have archive-name headers (I'm looking for specific volunteers here, not just people who think someone else will do it)? Only archives that would be accessible to the public by some means are interesting here. 4) Would anyone archive vmsnet.sources if it were a moderated group and ALL the postings had archive-name, posting number, and submitted-by headers (ditto caveats from #3). (This can be arranged if there is an incentive.) Basically, what I want to know is: is it worth the hassle, and if so, specifically why? I don't argue that they are in general a moderately good thing, but if that is an academic point, I'll worry about it some time in the future. As far as archive accessibility, FTP, mail servers, bitnet listserv's, human mail servers :-), human tape servers :-) are all appreciated. -- Terry Poot <tp@mccall.com> The McCall Pattern Company (uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!mccall!tp) 615 McCall Road (800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041 Manhattan, KS 66502, USA
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (07/17/90)
In article <3135.26a1fe54@mccall.com> tp@mccall.com writes: > that the posting number header is for use by automatic archiving programs. > So is the archive-name header. Will these programs work in the absence of a > posting-number header? The one I use will. > 2) Is anyone archiving vmsnet.sources anyway, or is this all academic at > this point? We're archiving all the sources we get our hands on, but if it doesn't have an archive name it gets shoved onto a little-used machine until someone can get around to figuring it out. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180. <peter@ficc.ferranti.com>