Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!att!mcdchg!ddsw1!karl From: karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) Newsgroups: news.sysadmin Subject: Re: clarinet?????? Summary: Brad didn't post the customary (and requested) "hello I'm here" msg Message-ID: <1989Nov2.002828.7125@ddsw1.MCS.COM> Date: 2 Nov 89 00:28:28 GMT References: <331@lawnet.LawNet.Com> <1989Oct20.072121.16743@rpi.edu> <332@lawnet.LawNet.Com> <2978@splut.conmicro.com> <661@visdc.UUCP> Reply-To: karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) Organization: Macro Computer Solutions, Inc., Mundelein, IL Lines: 92 In article <661@visdc.UUCP> jiii@visdc.UUCP (John E Van Deusen III) writes: >In article <2978@splut.conmicro.com> jay@splut.conmicro.com >(Jay Maynard) writes: >> >> Neither biz.all nor clari.all requires a vote. But biz.all does request that someone announce their intent before newgroups start showing up. As does the rest of the net. NO AREA ON USENET "requires" the announcement; "require" is something you just can't do in this medium. It's a matter of courtesy, a courtesy that was notable by it's absence. >These are the biz groups that I order from UUNET: (list deleted) >Note that I do not order biz, in the sense of getting everything that >biz might contain. If I subscribed to biz and biz.clarinet were >created, I would expect to begin receiving the new group. Yep. >One morning I got mail from my system that both biz.clarinet and >biz.clarinet.sample had been created. I should add that while I receive >a subset of the alt hierarchy from UUNET, UUNET has always shielded me >from the group creation activity characteristic of alt. Anyway, that >morning and each successive morning until I put a stop to it, >biz.clarinet.sample contained article after article of baseball game >synopses written in the same predictable and (to me) uninteresting style >that I had seen posted to sci.space during the Neptune flyby. > >I appreciated seeing a sample of the articles. I had previously been >inclined to subscribe to clarinet, and I could immediately determine >that reading a lot of that type of material would not be fun for me. >That said, I feel that an inordinate amount of that material was forced >upon me; especially considering the way a new hierarchy just popped up >and started filling up disk space. > >I hope that in the future the usenet presence of clarinet will confine >itself to biz.clarinet. If UUNET is in need of pushing more bits, >perhaps they could provide a uucp <-> ftp transfer capability or >something that is less controversial than the current association with >clarinet. From my perspective, the complicity of UUNET in the hard sell >of clarinet is unseemly. I don't believe that UUNET has a lot to do with it. However, Clarinet's crass sending of a control message in biz without announcing their intentions first is a little bit unnerving. Biz has no "czar" of the newgroups. If you wish to create a group in "biz", the accepted method of doing so is to post a message announcing your intent in one of the EXISTING groups (preferrably biz.config); barring a major complaint you issue the newgroup a week or two later. Clarinet didn't bother to send the announcement first. The purpose of that announcement is to allow people to adjust their sys files BEFORE YOU START FLOODING THEM, in the event that people don't want to see the stuff. As it sits, Clarinet just sent two newgroups, then hundreds of messages. It wasn't a big deal to me, but I can see (from the volume) where it could be for some people. After all, we are talking about: biz.clarinet 0000000010 00010 y biz.clarinet.sample 0000000917 00860 y NINE HUNDRED articles in the space of 3-4 weeks, or more than what some of the most popular groups received over the same period. MANY of those 900 were repetitions, which means that you sent and received them for nothing at all -- since they were cancelled and replaced a few hours later. Wonderful stuff. Thank the Gods that we get our feed via a Telebit -- otherwise we would likely be mightily upset over the transmission time involved here. I thank Brad for one thing -- he made it clear to me that the service is not worth the time or money, newsclip or no. My informal "reading" showed about a 50-70% duplicate rate -- where I would read before the "update" showed up, which then cancelled the old article, replaced it, and I got to see the replacement as well the next time through. Time to type the big "u". Biz is the right place for this kind of stuff. The procedure that was used in the creation of those groups, however, stunk. -- Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, !ddsw1!karl) Public Access Data Line: [+1 312 566-8911], Voice: [+1 312 566-8910] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"