Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!ucsd!brian
From: brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: MAXHOPS
Message-ID: <22528@ucsd.Edu>
Date: 9 Nov 90 16:52:05 GMT
References: <10811@milton.u.washington.edu> <1990Nov8.230931.15216@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: The Avant-Garde of the Now, Ltd.
Lines: 38

In article <1990Nov8.230931.15216@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
> I suspect this is mostly a problem of mailing lists which are being expanded
>too many times, and perhaps should be taken as an indication that the mailing
>list needs some reorganization.

I STRONGLY suggest that this is taking the wrong approach to the problem
of bulk distribution of electronic messages.

One of the main reasons we developed the NNTP was to use it and the
associated news software to REPLACE mailing lists.  All you have to do
is create a newsgroup and shove the traffic into it.

There are MANY top-level distributions that are NOT mainstream USENET,
are NOT hamstrung by its group creation "voting" guidelines, and they
ARE carrying a lot of former mailing-list traffic.

It's working.  Now all we need to do is to get more site administrators
to go for it.

For example, we take ONE subscription to each of many mailing lists
here at UCSD, then use NNTP to distribute them as 'mail.XXX' groups
among several hundred workstations and multiuser systems on campus with
a potential readership of over 5,000.  That way, we don't have hundreds
of people subscribing to a group and the resulting hundreds of copies
of mail arriving.

On a more global scale, most of the BITNET mailing lists are available
worldwide as bit.* newsgroups, and we recieve those as well.  Most of
them had at least one subscriber here at UCSD already;  now they don't
have to arrive as mail at all.  That's a potential savings of a LOT of
traffic.  Since we're already handling well over 12,000 messages a day,
I'd like to reserve the immediacy of e-mail for correspondence, not for
bulk distribution.  NNTP lets me do that.

	Brian Kantor	UCSD Postmaster
		UCSD Network Operations
		UCSD C-024, La Jolla, CA 92093-0124 USA	
		brian@ucsd.edu	BRIAN@UCSD ucsd!brian