Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!ox.com!msen.com!emv From: emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) Newsgroups: comp.archives.admin Subject: Re: Million dollars a year for COMP.ARCHIVES? Message-ID: Date: 21 Jun 91 09:00:02 GMT References: <632@mitech.com> Sender: usenet@ox.com (Usenet News Administrator) Followup-To: comp.archives.admin Organization: MSEN, Inc. Ann Arbor MI Lines: 30 In-Reply-To: gjc@mitech.com's message of 20 Jun 91 16:43:36 GMT In article <632@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com writes: Hmm. Looks like an automatic way of producing this stuff is an idea who's time has come. There are hundreds of people who announce materials available for anonymous FTP. If there were an easy-to-use standard form for them to fill out on-line, I'm sure sure it could be popularized quite quickly. I think that such a form would be quite useful; I know that it would help me out a lot. I wonder what all would be on it, though -- at least all of the information that I'm gathering now, plus more if you could stand it. Suggestions and working code welcome. You can't rely on volunteerism and self-cataloging to solve the entire problem. Existing projects which rely on self-cataloging and self-description have miserable hit rates; for instance, the BBN / NNSC Internet Resource Guide lists but 26 or so of the roughly 1000 archive sites on the internet. Or look at the "original" comp.archives; people were supposed to send in descriptions of their stuff, and fill out a complicated database format. They didn't. -- 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"