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From: Cherry@Frodo.MGH.Harvard.EDU (J. Michael Cherry)
Newsgroups: bionet.general
Subject: Re: Source of duplicate messages found
Message-ID: <6625@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 2 May 91 01:39:49 GMT
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Organization: Molecular Biology, Mass. General Hospital
Lines: 27

In article <2138@fcs280s.ncifcrf.gov> toms@fcs260c2.ncifcrf.gov (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

The INFO-VMS list has also had lots of problems with duplicates. More 
importantly I think the problems generally seem to be associated with 
LISTSERVs. There are many Usenet/Mailing list pairs that do not have these 
problems. Most of these pairs that seem to work use an Internet mailing 
list and not a BITNET LISTSERV. The problem is not simply mailing lists. 
As someone who ran a mailing list of 300 subscribers for a year and a half 
I know they can work without problems. Thus I wish to stop any move to 
eliminate mailing lists from BioSci. I know many people that would not 
take the time to use Usenet and would thus not be a part of BioSci. I 
should point out that I personally use Usenet and have been reading 
newsgroups via Unix, VMS or Macintosh newsreaders for the past ten years. 
I agree Usenet is the best method and that everyone should learn to use a 
newsreader but teaching old dogs new tricks can be very frustrating. 
Usenet swept computer science departments many years ago, it may take 
several more years before biology departments convert - and I don't 
think they should be forced.

Mike Cherry
cherry@frodo.mgh.harvard.edu
Department of Molecular Biology
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston