Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Why not just eliminate all the hierarchies?
Message-ID: <35517@looking.on.ca>
Date: 18 Oct 89 16:15:07 GMT
References: <34075@looking.on.ca> <5071@omepd.UUCP>
Reply-To: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 37
Class: discussion

When I say that you "or" together the .newsrc files (including the .newsrc
files of sites you feed) it doesn't have to be exactly a .newsrc file!

The only info you really need out of it is the names of the subscribed
groups.  It's a 2-line sed script to extract that from a .newsrc, and I
can't imagine it's a lot more to extract it from any other kind of
newsreader record file.   The fact that some people don't use .newsrc files
is hardly relevant.

NNTP is more relevant, of course.  Several solutions are possible.  One is
that clients have to run the 'or'ing program every day, too, from their
cron, and transmit it somehow to the server.  That's not too hard.

Another would be for NNTP to keep a log of the last time anybody
requested a message from each group.  If it's greater than N, where N is
something like 1 month (expiry time?) then consider the group unread by
the clients.  Not perfect, but what can you do?

I see no problem with the program that reads the .newsrc files being run
by root.   If you want to hide your .newsrc from the program, that's fine,
you can put it somewhere it won't look, and not tell anybody.  But then
you might not get to read the groups you like.  That's only fair, for
on a system that is trying to reduce the load of feeding and storing
groups nobody wants, it is only reasonable that you have to ask somebody
to feed the group.

If you are really concerned about people being afraid to ask for
alt.sex.bondage, or even letting root know that you read it, the sysadmin
will just have to put that group in the always-feed list.

My mechanism makes newsgroups even more efficient than mailing lists.
It means that USENET can grow without problems, for there is a human limit
on the number of groups an individual can read.  As such, even with 10,000
groups, we would never see a site get more than the few score per person
that an individual can read.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473