Newsgroups: comp.archives.admin Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!ox.com!msen.com!emv From: emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) Subject: Re: copyright status and future development of comp.archives In-Reply-To: wilker@gauss.math.purdue.edu's message of 19 Jun 91 12:48:51 GMT Message-ID: Sender: usenet@ox.com (Usenet News Administrator) Organization: MSEN, Inc. Ann Arbor MI References: <13748@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1991 08:04:01 GMT Lines: 54 In article <13748@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> wilker@gauss.math.purdue.edu (Clarence Wilkerson) writes: I particularly like the verification of the location, directories, and size of the archived material. There's nothing as frustrating as not being able to find the advertised material. Thanks Clarence. As you know I've been doing this stuff for almost 7 years now starting from when I was collecting ms-dos software on um.cc.umich.edu; so far the track record at getting support for the efforts has not been all that good. My part-time position as organizer of the collection was un-filled for most of a year after I moved on to another job; it took something short of an angry mob at the door of the Computer Center to fill the position. (That collection is still active at msdos.archive.umich.edu now days, a little gray around the edges in spots, but still going.) One of the things which will distinguish between the MSEN Archive Service and what I'll eventually be posting to comp.archives is that comp.archives postings won't have the verified locations and sizes in them any more. Identifying and double-checking these takes time and effort, which slows down the process substantially. I'm hoping that something can be worked out such that the verificationn information will still be posted to the comp.archives group (just not by me!) in separate postings; some standard data formats would help, and it would be an opportunity to run something like "archie" searches to see just how many old stale copies there are out there that need to be updated. I guess that brings up the point -- it's about time that the community get more involved in the continued care and feeding of comp.archives (the free group), in ways that make it better for everyone. I'd particularly like to work out some kind of feedback mechanism where comments about the programs get fed back more closely to the community here. For instance, if there were an RN macro or GNUS function that you could invoke when you were reading comp.archives to signal that you thought that the software or the description was exceptional (or lousy), that information could be fed back to a collection point and used as a first pass at a review. (Something like "arbitron" except just for the one group.) Similarly, I'd like to see first-quality original material posted to comp.archives, like reviews or surveys, without the absolute necessity for a moderator to get in the way. (i'd say "unmoderate it" except for the risk of it just being another comp.sources.wanted....) -- Edward Vielmetti, moderator, comp.archives, emv@msen.com "(6) The Plan shall identify how agencies and departments can collaborate to ... expand efforts to improve, document, and evaluate unclassified public-domain software developed by federally-funded researchers and other software, including federally-funded educational and training software; " "High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, S. 272"