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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site decuac.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!decuac!avolio
From: avolio@decuac.UUCP (Frederick M. Avolio)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: The politics of groups and the death of the news
Message-ID: <610@decuac.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Sep-85 22:33:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: decuac.610
Posted: Mon Sep  9 22:33:50 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Sep-85 04:32:32 EDT
References: <1996@amdahl.UUCP>, <791@vortex.UUCP> <626@bu-cs.UUCP>
Organization: ULTRIX Applications Center, MD
Lines: 27

In article <626@bu-cs.UUCP>, root@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein) writes:
> 
> First, I think Lauren was a little gloomy the day he announced the death
> of the USENET, it's certainly reached an annoying level in many ways,
> but, as the old expression goes, 'the reports of my death have been
> greatly exagerrated'.

I agree with a solution (of sorts) which has been suggested: that
heavily loaded sites turn off some news groups.  And new sites never
turn them on.  Let me briefly explain how we started dealing with news
on decuac a year ago.

When we "joined" USENET, our disk space was very limited.  Because of
that we started by only receiving "technical" groups, and then only
ones for which there was an interest.  We then added some non-
technical groups as people requested them.  Even now, after getting
loads more disk space, we operate the same way.  In addition, we
expire some groups much sooner than others (3 days for some).  While
we made it clear to our local "backbone" site (seismo) that we were
very willing to pass on news, a number of folks have lost interest
when then find out that we do not receive *everything*. (My goodness!!
No net.rec.nude?!?!?  Where do people get the time to read all this
stuff?)

I think if sites do turn off links and groups (by turn off groups, I
mean no one passes them said groups) for their own well-being, we will
see the net get healthier again.