Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!munnari.oz.au!sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au!chook.ua.oz
From: cagney@chook.ua.oz (Andrew Cagney - aka Noid)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Source Posting Proposal
Message-ID: <1280@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au>
Date: 4 Aug 90 07:31:03 GMT
References: <5389@plains.UUCP>
Sender: news@ucs.adelaide.edu.au
Lines: 32

From article <5389@plains.UUCP>, by overby@plains.UUCP (Glen Overby):
> I'd like to propose a posting standard....

[Good proposal followed]

Any way, I have a further proposal relating to the management of the archives.

At present when someone posts an article to the net it is dropped into an
archive as is. When patches come round they are dropped into the same
directory. The poor end user is then left to fetch them & apply them in
succession :-)

For the australian archive I've been trying to avoid doing this. If a major
local product is posted I contact the poster and organize a compressed
tar file of what was posted. If the originator posts an update I get them
to send to me (using ftp), for the archive, an updated posting of their work.
By doing this I am managing to keep the archive tidy with out too much work by
the originator and me much  while there is greater convenience for the any one
that uses the archive.

Some notes are:

	- This is not suitable for posters (sp?) who do not have ftp access
	- It's probably ok for small archives (like oz) but not so usefull
	  for large archives.
	- The poster gets a little extra work
	- The archiver may have a little less work :-)
	- Who is responsible for postings that get taken over?

Any comments on this?

						Andrew Cagney