"Catherine A. Foulston" <cathyf@rice.edu> (02/20/90)
In article <NETNWS-L%90021612411951@NDSUVM1.BITNET> Linda Littleton <LRL@PSUVM.B >Currently PSUVM gateways about 130 Listserv lists into Netnews. Historically, >we have added these gateways whenever anyone asked for them. Should we have >more controls on adding bit groups or should we (and other Netnews sites) >continue to add them as people request them? Let's discuss. I do think there should be some form of control. I keep finding articles with newsgroup names in bit.listserv for which I've never seen a newgroup control message. And it seems some admins want to create a net-wide bit group every time the subscription of a list reaches five users. This is likely to result in a chaotic jumble of groups. I think a couple of things need to happen before a particular bit group is created: 1. There needs to be some consensus among netnews admins that the group will have sufficient readership to be worth distributing via netnews. As has been discussed, netnews is more efficient for a widely-read group, but for only a few subscribers, mail is better. Since I have little experience with bitnet/netnews/listserv, I won't attempt to say how such a consensus should be reached in the bitnet world. I certainly wouldn't wish news.groups upon bitnet. (It's often more like news.groups.flamewars.) 2. The group needs to be gatewayed properly. There needs to be an established method for telling the gatewayer that a group is being created, and where its moderator is. Perhaps the newgroup message is sufficient, as long as everybody knows to include the relevant details in the message and as long as they know this message will reach the gatewayer. And the newgroup message needs to get out to the usenet side. I also agree that cross-posting of articles that need to be in more than one group must happen somehow. Given a choice between duplicating the articles and having half the articles missing from each group, I'd pick the former. But hopefully we can work out a way to crosspost correctly and avoid both problems. ----- Someone wondered why we usenet people would want the bit.all hierarchy. Here are our (Rice's) reasons: -Spool space. If we can convince everyone to read news from unix, then we can have one news spool and everyone on campus can read from it over the network. (Though it looks like the only way to get all our VM/CMS users to do this will be to write an NNTP-based newsreader for CMS. Not everyone can get a unix account.) -Read all the news in one place. We don't have room on ricevm1 for all the usenet groups. If we didn't have the listserv groups on the usenet side, some of us would have to read some of our news from unix and some from CMS. And some people would simply rather use one of the unix newsreaders. (Including me - I have no particular gripes with netnews, I'm just used to unix and rn.) -Only have to administer one news system. I've been running usenet news since June, and a month ago netnews was given to me as well. So now I take care of both. I'd rather just have one. Of course, it's been a useful learning experience, since before I started, I knew around five CMS commands. :-) ----- I'm glad all this is happening. I think it's great that we're improving the communication between Bitnet and Usenet. I think both communities will benefit. Cathy Foulston cathyf@rice.edu cathyf@ricevm1 -- Cathy
Jim McIntosh <JIM@AUVM.bitnet> (02/20/90)
On Fri, 16 Feb 90 13:38:00 EST Linda Littleton said: >Currently PSUVM gateways about 130 Listserv lists into Netnews. Historically, >we have added these gateways whenever anyone asked for them. Should we have >more controls on adding bit groups or should we (and other Netnews sites) >continue to add them as people request them? Let's discuss. I was not aware that the bit.listserv.all groups were moving onto Usenet. As a simply internal BitNet vehicle I think the NETNEWS distribution makes a lot of sense. I have found that groups of users will subscribe to a Listserv list at the same time. I would imagine that someone tells his or her friends about a list they've found, or a professor mentions a list in class. (Sometimes these clustering of subscriptions don't make much sense. Over half of our mainframe computer operators, for example, are subscribed to the MEDNEWS list.) A significant amount of our spool space is dedicated to incoming e-mail, and most of this is Listserv traffic. A scan of the mail waiting in our spool shows that much of the mail is coming from the same lists. Since we have a backbone Listserv here, we don't save network bandwidth by using NETNEWS if any of our neighbors have users subscribed to the list, but we do save spool space. Our users gain a much nicer user interface; their mailboxes are reserved for personal mail; they get a built-in 14 day archive; and they have the ability to read list traffic without having to subscribe to a list. I have, therefore, moved our Listserv documentation into the background, and have tried to promote NETNEWS as the tool for people to keep current on list traffic. I have subscribed NETNEWS to those lists which had more than a couple of subscribers. This was, as I said, without realizing that the groups were being passed to Usenet. I find it a little frightening that I can create a Usenet newsgroup, although I guess everyone has that power in the alt.all groups. The groups I recently added all had multiple subscribers here at AUVM. I could have added them as au.bit.ls.all (which would not be distributed to other NETNEWS sites) and could always rename them if other sites have no interest in them. I'm not sure, however, how to determine whether a group is widely read (or would be if it were available in NETNEWS). Perhaps only lists which have more than "50" subscribers (or some arbitrary number) should be sent to NETNEWS as a whole. If a list has less than "x" subscribers then a site should add it as a local group if they wanted to make it available to local NETNEWS users. The number of subscribers can be obtained by asking the host listserv "REVIEW listname (SHORT". This could be enforced (if we need to have it enforced) by only gatewaying groups into NETNEWS at PSUVM (since they are doing the majority now) or some other central site. I'd be willing to check the number of subscribers to the lists I added here, if others think that it is a good idea. Jim McIntosh (JIM@AUVM) The American University Washington DC 20016 USA
"Leonard H. Tower Jr." <tower@BUITA.BU.EDU> (02/23/90)
In article <9002170815.AA18201@caesar.cs.montana.edu> NETNWS-L Netnews List <NET |However, possibly looking into 'renaming' the groups -- not the lists -- |could be useful, as whole hierarchies of groups could be ignored at will. If it's decided to rename the groups, I suggest you merge them into the inet distribtuion of the mainstream 7 news hierarchies. This would fit them into the naming scheme used USENET wide. This scheme isn't optimal, but it's what most of the users know and has worked well enough. The bit hierarchy and the inet distribution are quite similar in the problems they are trying to solve, as well as the way they work and are administered. The nntp-managers list (where inet distribution issues have been discussed) could help with name selection and review. I be happy to coordinate such a renaming (I've been involved in USENET naming issues since 1982). If this happens, it probably be wise to set up a new inet-news mailing list to coordinate the enlarged distribution and let the nntp-mailing list remain focused on nntp issues. I've appended some info on the inet distribution. thanx -len ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) Newsgroups: news.lists,news.groups,news.announce.newusers Subject: Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies (Updated: 16 Feb 1990) Summary: describes the following alternate hierarchies: alt, bionet, biz, clarinet, gnu, inet/ddn, pubnet, unix-pc, u3b, vmsnet Message-ID: <9735@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Date: 17 Feb 90 05:03:53 GMT Expires: 18 May 90 05:03:52 GMT Followup-To: poster Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ. Supersedes: <9708@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Original-from: hoptoad!gnu (John Gilmore) and spaf@purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) [Most recent change: 16 Feb 1990 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)] Introduction ------------ The Usenet software allows the support and transport of hierarchies of newsgroups not part of the "traditional" Usenet through use of the distribution mechanism. These hierarchies of groups are available to sites wishing to support them and finding a feed. In general, these groups are not carried by the entire network due to their volume, a restricted sphere of interest, or a different set of administrative rules and concerns. In general it is a bad idea to forward these newsgroups to your neighbors without asking them first; they should only be received at a site by choice. Not only is this generally-accepted net etiquette, it helps to preserve the freedom to do and say as the posters please in these newsgroups, since the only people who get them are those who asked to get them. This freedom is more restricted in the Usenet as a whole, since every mainstream posting and every mainstream newsgroup name must be acceptable to a much wider audience than is present in these hierarchies. Due to the sheer size of the mainstream Usenet, extra-long or controversial postings are more likely to cause problems when posted to the Usenet; however, these alternative hierarchies exist precisely to support those kinds of postings (if germane to the hierarchy). Usually, there is is no restriction on getting these groups as long as you have the capacity to receive, store, and forward the groups; 2.10.3 or 2.11 news is required to make the distribution mechanism work properly for these groups. How to join each distribution is described below. Note that the "uunet" service carries all of these hierarchies. Contact uunet!uunet-request for subscription details. Also note -- the lists in this article are totally unofficial and possibly incomplete or inaccurate. I try to keep the lists up-to-date, but make no guarantee that any of the information contained corresponds with the named groups in any significant way. Corrections and comments should be mailed directly to me. ..Text.Deleted... Inet/DDN -------- Another alternative hierarchy is the "inet/ddn" distribution. This consists of many newsgroups bearing names similar to traditional Usenet groups and corresponding to Arpa discussion lists. These groups are circulated using the NNTP transport mechanism amongst sites on the Internet in an attempt to reduce the number of copies of these groups flowing through the mail (some sites get these groups via UUCP and other tranpost mechanisms, but the volume can be substantial and load may be significant without a high-speed link). Further details may be obtained by writing to Erik Fair (fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu). Current inet groups are: ddn.mgt-bulletin The DDN Management Bulletin from NIC.DDN.MIL (Moderated) ddn.newsletter The DDN Newsletter from NIC.DDN.MIL (Moderated) ..Text.Deleted... -- Gene Spafford NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf ---------------------------------------------------------------------- enjoy -len