Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!bari!briang From: briang@bari.Sun.COM (Brian Gordon) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: Well, use it... Keywords: get the facts, jack Message-ID: <128633@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 30 Nov 89 18:18:27 GMT References: <7551@fear+loathing.UUCP> <128533@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <17386@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU> Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Reply-To: briang@sun.UUCP (Brian Gordon) Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 63 In article <17386@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU> hougen@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Dean Hougen) writes: >In article <128533@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> briang@sun.UUCP (Brian Gordon) writes: >>Would that that were possible. If ANY news administrator between my system and >>yours refuses to carry sci.aquaria, or aliases it to alt.aquaria, you will be >>unable to receive anything I post to sci.aquaria, even if both our sites carry >>it. It is a non-group, despite the winning vote. > >It is a group, despite the attempted sabotage of certain net.tyrants. Where >I am at we get a good deal of traffic through sci.aquaria, and much of it is >different from what appears in alt.aquaria. Of course, the bad connectivity >causes some problems, just as it does for alt.* groups. Still, it has managed >to get to a great many sights, many of whom do not get alt.aquaria. > >If you are seeing little or nothing at your sight, start doing some searching >for the nut who is strangling your feed, and when you find him/her start >applying preasure to get the line opened up. Usenet is for the users, dammit! >Don't let some petty.dictator take it away from you. (Note that many of these >dispicable creatures have confessed their sins publicly in news.groups, so >they are a good place to start looking to find your particular pain.in.the. >ass.) My understanding of usenet topology and yours must differ widely if you think that the problem is some single point. Moreover, my understand of usenet "policy" and yours must differ widely if you think I can "apply pressure" to a feed. Usenet, as I understand it, can be viewed as a ring (ignoring the leaf nodes and the relatively uncommon site with multiple feeds). Messages posted from a site are sent in both directions around the ring (again ignoring leaf nodes) and the message-id is used to keep it from "passing itself" in either direction. Suppose there are only 1,000 machines on this ring, and there are 200 between me and you in one direction and 800 in the other. Suppose there are only 10% of the sites that either do not carry sci.aquaria, or alias it to something else (so that articles that arrive in that newsgroup leave in another). Assuming uniform distribution of those 100 sites, there are 20 places in one direction and 80 in the other where your article is blocked from reaching your site, and the same number where your articles are blocked from reaching mine. Even if it is 5% instead of 10%, the group, in effect, just doesn't exist as a net-wide information exchange medium. Secondly, how do I, a spare-time usenet reader at Sun, "pressure" the spare-time usenet maintainer of a site hundreds of miles away to do ANYTHING he/she does not want to do? Hell, I can't even get MY news administrator to do things I think are good. My site has chosen to carry sci.aquaria, so I get to see three or four articles there a week, and have seen virtually no followups -- which I attribute to the articles not getting to that many people in the isolated arc containing Sun and reaching in both directions to sites which have chosen not to carry sci.aquaria. Somehow I don't see that as "a usenet group" in any meaningful sense. I doubt that most of the net has been able to see either of MY postings there. Does this fill Dean Hougen's request to "get the facts, jack"? No amount of yelling/posturing/logic/etc. is likely to change reality -- sci.aquaria does not exist. Whether is should or shouldn't is irrelevant. It doesn't. Saying "Usenet is for the users, dammit! Don't let some petty.dictator take it away from you." doesn't change a thing. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Brian G. Gordon briang@Corp.Sun.COM (if you trust exotic mailers) | | ...!sun!briangordon (if you route it yourself) | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com