Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Cnews and old news
Message-ID: <1990Sep23.042833.24834@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <26675@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 90 04:28:33 GMT

In article <26675@mimsy.umd.edu> pete@mimsy.umd.edu (Pete Cottrell) writes:
>	I have heard that Cnews doesn't have any mechanism to junk the
>old news and prevent its propogation, but I don't know for sure ...

Sigh.  Unfortunately correct.  The trouble is that getdate() is relatively
costly and Geoff is reluctant to run it on every single article just on
the off-chance that it might be too old.  (There is also a lesser problem
in that it is *not* easy to pick a good number for "how old is too old?";
on the fringes of Usenet, fairly long propagation delays are not unheard-of.)

We had hoped that keeping more history, using dbz's more efficient history
database, would be sufficient.  I think the answer is no.
-- 
TCP/IP: handling tomorrow's loads today| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
OSI: handling yesterday's loads someday|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry