space@mit-mc (02/18/85)
From: John Bruner <jdb@mordor.ARPA> Since I just recently set up the gateway between USENET and the SPACE mailing list (after seeing some requests that the gateway be re-established), perhaps I should comment upon the matter. (Then again, perhaps I shouldn't, but I will anyway.) I believe that most USENET readers are unaware of how ARPANET mailing lists work, and that conversely many ARPANET people are not familiar with USENET. USENET acts as an electronic bulletin board. Readers may "subscribe" to a variety of "newsgroups" which are then presented to them when they run a "readnews" program. (There are variations on the theme, one of which is the "notesfiles" system, but the basic idea is the same.) There is one copy of each article per system. The vast majority of USENET newsgroups are not moderated. A USENET reader places an article into the USENET news stream by "posting" it to one or more newsgroups. An ARPANET mailing list is exactly what its name implies: a list of people to whom ARPANET mail is sent periodically. The list is maintained by one person (the list's moderator). Readers subscribe to the list by sending mail to the list moderator, requesting to be added to the mailing list. (This mail is sometimes misdirected, hence the occasional "please add me/delete me to/from the list" messages that show up.) Most mailing lists are distributed in the form of a digest, which contains several messages that have arrived at a specified mailing address (e.g. SPACE@MIT-MC) in the few days preceeding the new digest mailing. In the case of the SPACE digest, S1-C (MORDOR) converts incoming USENET articles in the newsgroups "net.space" and "net.columbia" and mails them to the digest. Mail to SPACE@MIT-MC is sent to MORDOR and is posted to the USENET newsgroup "net.space". It is my understanding that this was the arrangement with the previous gateway (SRI-UNIX, I think). Note that USENET receives the individual letters, not the digest. (It is be trivial to gateway the digest too; in fact, I read the SPACE digest via a local newsgroup that is gatewayed in exactly this fashion.) The nature of the "net.space" and "net.columbia" newsgroups is different. Since letters mailed to SPACE show up only on "net.space", perhaps readers of the SPACE digest would prefer to see only articles posted to "net.space" on USENET. I believe that the recent series on the sustain of electric guitars in a vacuum came from "net.columbia". I can make this change easily. -- John Bruner (S-1 Project, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) MILNET: jdb@mordor.ARPA [jdb@s1-c] (415) 422-0758 UUCP: ...!ucbvax!dual!mordor!jdb ...!decvax!decwrl!mordor!jdb