Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!uunet!bionet!kristoff From: kristoff@genbank.bio.net (David Kristofferson) Newsgroups: bionet.general Subject: IMPORTANT - ALL BIOSCI SUBSCRIBERS PLEASE READ! Message-ID: Date: 30 Apr 91 18:37:36 GMT References: <2138@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov> Organization: GenBank Online Service Lines: 148 Tom Schneider writes: These bionet groups are the only news groups that regularly have these problems. If there is no technical reason that prevents people from switching to a pure usenet system, then how about making a reasonable deadline for the switch? After a certain date news would no longer be sent by mail, perhaps with the exception of a few 'hardship' cases. Because of these problems, we all have to read a lot of junk all the time and it's wasting people's time, especially yours Dave! If you can't set a deadline because of a bionet charter then change the charter. If you set a deadline, everybody will suddenly be interested... :-). Tom, The reasons that these problems persist is because BIOSCI has remained a collaborative effort between us and three other sites in Europe. About two months ago a similar incident caused Rob Harper to resign in frustration from IRLEARN because he didn't have access to everything that he needed there. I frankly could solve most of these problems if we simply terminated the collaboration and ran the mailing lists and newsgroups from here. I am sorry to say that since reporting the looping problem to IRLEARN last Friday evening I have received absolutely no response from anyone there even though the weekend is long past. I eventually resolved the problem myself by contacting the person at Ohio State over the weekend and getting them to signoff from IRLEARN. I have also attempted at length to get the UK node to take steps to resolve some of the issues with their mailing system, but progress here has also been very slow. You may logically ask why have I put up with this for so long. The reason is that many people on JANET in the U.K. do not seem to know how to reach some of our addresses in the U.S. Even some novice BITNET users in this country still have problems mailing to Internet addresses. Our goal has been to make this system as easily accessible to as many biologists around the world as possible. We want to get wide coverage to convince people that this resource *is* worth their time and effort to learn. This unfortunately leads to the problems and incoveniences that bother our more experienced networkers. So what is to be done?? In many respects it pains me greatly to mention this because BIOSCI has been a fairly successful collaboration overall. Over the last year however, as evidenced by the increasing frustration and eventual resignation of Rob Harper from IRLEARN, the enthusiasm seems to have waned at the other sites. Therefore I feel that I must put the issue of our future out to our readers. I contend that we could run these lists more efficiently if all of the mailing lists were maintained here at genbank.bio.net. (I'll comment about the transition to USENET further below). The amount of resources devoted to BIOSCI at the other sites has just not been as great as those available here unfortunately. Currently if I find a problem on a Friday evening (the worst possible time) I have no way of resolving it often over the entire weekend if it is on a mailing list somewhere else. Although this could be resolved by giving me access to IRLEARN as Rob Harper had previously from Finland, this is not a solution that I find attractive. Delays on BITNET can sometimes be substantial and can make a 10 second fix that I could do right here take ***literally hours***. LISTSERV, the software used at IRLEARN, does not follow Internet standards, and we have gone through several rounds of discussion about overcoming these incompatibilities behind the scenes, most of the time with little to show for them. I realize that LISTSERV is still extremely popular on BITNET, but I firmly believe that this is the wave of the past, not the future, and that it's inclusion in BIOSCI makes it necessary for us to make compromise solutions instead of those that are technologically best. How would we make this switch in mailing list maintenance? Either the other three BIOSCI nodes could simply give us the lists from their sites for inclusion here or the readers themselves could request to switch their subscriptions by canceling at the other nodes and signing up here. The relevant addresses are: Address Location Network ------- -------- ------- biosci@irlearn.ucd.ie Ireland EARN/BITNET biosci@uk.ac.daresbury U.K. JANET biosci@bmc.uu.se Sweden Internet biosci@genbank.bio.net U.S.A. Internet/BITNET HOWEVER, BEFORE ANYONE DOES THIS, we need to get a feeling of our readers' desire for such a change. PLEASE send me a message, either supporting or opposing the transfer of the mailing lists, to biovote@genbank.bio.net This in itself will be a good test of our readers' ability to reach this address. If you can not get through you may have to resort to using one of the other addresses below, but, PLEASE, ask your systems manager first how to reach the above Internet address instead of simply taking the path of least resistance. If you can get through then the inaccessibility issue will be laid to rest. If significant numbers of people still need to use the following forwarding addresses then we will have to consider other measures (the mailing lists could still be maintained here and forwarding addresses could be kept on other networks). Biovote Forwarding Addresses (these all come to me) Address Location Network ------- -------- ------- biovote@irlearn.ucd.ie Ireland EARN/BITNET biovote@uk.ac.daresbury U.K. JANET biovote@bmc.uu.se Sweden Internet biovote@genbank.bio.net U.S.A. Internet/BITNET Having devoted the last five years of my life to this project, I am dearly concerned about the future success of BIOSCI and the continued use of electronic networks by biologists. I hope that this move will strengthen the service instead of damaging it, but, regardless of the outcome, it is definitely clear that more effort needs to be devoted to BIOSCI than has been in the recent past. To date we have ***merely been lucky*** that a bigger mailing loop problem has not affected us, and, I do not believe that we can continue in our current ineffectual mode of action. I do not take this action lightly. Rob Harper and the others know how patiently we have been negotiating over an extended period of time. It was and always will be extremely important to me to maintain the international character of BIOSCI because some of the finest examples of BIOSCI's utility have come from scientists in a number of contries helping each other solve problems. However, we owe it to our users to provide them with better service than they are currently receiving, and I believe that the above proposal to consolidate the mailing lists at genbank.bio.net will achieve that end. Sincerely, David Kristofferson, Ph.D. GenBank Manager kristoff@genbank.bio.net P.S. - Tom, the idea of simply announcing a deadline by which people have to convert to USENET does have certain attractions to it, but from the feedback that I continue to get each time USENET has been mentioned, this is still premature. Currently we have between 40-50% of our readers accessing BIOSCI through USENET. When we get up to the 70-75% range then we may be in a position to contemplate this. Our main concern has always been to serve our users and a forced switch particularly at this time would not be good service.