Newsgroups: news.software.b Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!tale From: tale@rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) Subject: Re: sys file entries for CNEWS Message-ID: Nntp-Posting-Host: cs.rpi.edu Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Computer Science, Troy NY References: <1991Mar18.170511.6535@st_nik!swindon.ingr.com> <1991Mar19.224950.4653@zoo.toronto.edu> <449@skyking.UUCP> <1991Mar23.193554.25944@looking.on.ca> Date: 23 Mar 91 21:16:59 GMT Lines: 70 In <1991Mar23.193554.25944@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton): Yes, "all" is convenient, if you are feeding a true sub-leaf that is in every single domain you are in. But the convenience has caused sys files to be sloppily written everywhere. Au contraire, mon frere! (Whatever. My second language is German, not French.) I do not use "all" simply because it is convenient, and I am offended at the implication that I am a sloppy news administrator. I am proud to be what I believe is a better than average news administrator, and I'll thank you not to second guess why my sys file is configured the way it is. I strongly suggest that C news remove "all" as a valid distribution field. Force the people with the sloppy files to fix them if they upgrade. It will never become perfect again, due to those who don't upgrade, but it's a start. I then will personally hack it right back into the locally hacked relaynews I run. Why do I use all,!local,!rpi? Because Distribution: in every current news system I have seen is broken. The concept is nice, but the implementation is very weak. It is a philosophical problem with news. I have seen many articles come through news with Distribution:s like "everyone", "all", "net", &c. Distributions which clearly were intended to propagate the article widely but which the policy you suggest would prevent from happening. On the other hand, I see roughly the same percentage, perhaps even a little less, of articles in mainstream hierarchies which really should have been limited to the geographical distribution which was intended. Sometimes "the right thing" is quite tricky to see. As an example, what about when someone announces a singles event in soc.singles with a Distribution: of ba? I currently get ba here in New York because we have displaced Californians and others who appreciate the hierarchy. Asking us to come to a new singles volleyball event in San Jose on Saturday is pretty dumb; the article probably shouldn't appear here for logistical reasons. The same is not true of most of the traffic in most of the regionals I have read, which is why it is not uncommon for a regional to leave its physical vicinity. The same could also be said of a great many (attempted) limited distribution articles in major hierarchies. I prefer in these cases, and the cases of bogus Distributions like mentioned above, for the article to be propagated more widely than intended rather than to have it silently fail to get to the audience which was expected to receive it. I know of several good admins who share this opinion. My "sloppy sys file" comes from a very sloppy attempt at general network news distribution control in widely spread hierarchies. It has been considered and reconsidered many times by me and I do not as yet have a compelling reason to change how I forward news. Often we as administrators can see to what location the article should reasonably go, but it is a grey area. Now how do we code it, and how do we instruct the users about the best way to target the distribution? What? They shouldn't have to worry about some complex system, and the simpleness of Distribution: should be fine? Then how come so many of them got it wrong before C News even showed up widely? C News is not the major illness here. ... the fake-distributions of "comp", "rec" etc. which shouldn't exist but some twizots use. They exist according to RFC 1036. Supplement the RFC if this is truly a wrong thing. I would agree that it is, but the Distribution: vs hierarchy scheme has traditionally been very closely related. "Good luck." -- (setq mail '("tale@rpi.edu" "uupsi!rpi!tale" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))