Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!think.com!fcsys!trystro!root
From: root@trystro.uucp (Rick Nickle)
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: TASS 3.0 - a News Reader
Message-ID: <9104152015.09@trystro.uucp>
Date: 16 Apr 91 01:16:48 GMT
References: <1991Apr14.180426.3853@jrix.radig.de> <1991Apr15.160006.25249@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: root@trystro.UUCP (Richard Nickle)
Organization: The Trystero System
Lines: 86

In article <1991Apr15.160006.25249@spool.cs.wisc.edu> rose@galtee.cs.wisc.edu (Martin Luther King) writes:
>In article <1991Apr14.180426.3853@jrix.radig.de> joachim@jrix.radig.de (Joachim Riedel) writes:
>
>>This is my first source posting to the net so please excuse if something
>>went wrong.
>
>Much as we would all like to have wide distribution of sources for Coherent,
>I must say that there are some problems with posting sources to a discussion
>group-- like this one.  For one thing, some sites can't afford the kind of
>traffic that a sources group has, and therefore don't carry them.  If we don't
>self-police and keep sources out of comp.os.coherent, we may find some sites
>deciding not to carry this group-- I hope that we can agree that that is not
>in our interest.  I am particularly concerned because comp.os.coherent will
>likely soon be gatewayed onto the ListServe and Internet mailing lists, where
>big sources postings could cost individual users big money.

Just a thought, but wouldn't it make more sense to gateway the mailing lists
into the newsgroup and newsgroup readers could reply to questions via email?
Pretty soon, I would imagine most of the questions on the mailing lists are
going to boil down to 'how do i get comp.os.coherent anyway?'.

Since this group is unmoderated, it would be hard to make any kind of policy
decisions concerning sources.  I believe it's reasonable to put the decision
to post sources to the newsgroup squarely on the shoulders of the poster, but
provide some guidelines.  For instance, the decision not to post cnews/rn etc.
sources was made solely on the basis of the amount of tonnage usenet would
have to move: a sound decision.  But Joachim's newsreader was much less than
100kb, so it didn't drag the net down as much as, say, 15 minutes worth of
alt.sex.pictures postings.  I'm all for small, previously unavailable sources
being posted to this forum.  I would not like to see redundant, large sources
posted here.

The key word you used, Scott, was 'self-police'.  Since this is not an arbitrary
discussion group, I would assume that everyone here is interested in Coherent,
and relevant software.  I would also assume that anybody reading this group
is likely to be intelligent enough to make a decision concerning how much
effect his posting is going to have on the net in relation to the net benefit
to everyone who reads this group.  These newsgroups are here for the benefit
of the readers, and if somebody posts software that benefits everyone, then
the group has served its purpose, and the bandwidth was not wasted.  Anybody
who does post something out of line is probably not 'stupid', but just not
aware of bandwidth issues.

My suggestion is this:

	Think about it before you post:

		A new newsreader is a great idea.  A program that calculates
		the number of bunions on your Grandmother's toes is not what
		we want to see here.

	Check to make sure it's not either:

		a) already on the piggy archive
		b) already on the mwcbbs archive
		c) in some other newsgroup (comp.os.minix, comp.sources.*)

		In which case an announcement of
		'Hey, this great new package is available from source X'
		Would be much better appreciated than a post.

	Try not to post anything huge to this newsgroup:

		My notion of huge is "more than 100kb".
		But then again, 100kb is only approximately 4 shars
		or split uuencoded packets.  That's only an extra
		4 messages in the newsgroup daily.  Even a couple
		hundred kb would be reasonable if it provided a
		great benefit to everyone.  Things like cnews/rn
		rcs or any other multi-megabyte sources do NOT fit
		into this category though.  

	Try to get it to piggy.ucsb.edu if you have FTP.  If you can
	FTP something to piggy, it'll eventually trickle down to everybody.
	This works, because quite a bit of the stuff on mwcbbs is software
	posted to piggy that I downloaded and then mailed to MWC.  They
	sent me a few diskettes to do this.  When they send me some more
	disks, I'll do it again. :)


Rick
-- 
Richard Nickle			
The Trystro System		rick@trystro.UUCP
(617) 625-7155 2400bps
Somerville, Massachusetts.	"The sun ain't yellow, it's Chicken."--Bob Dylan