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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Causes on the net...
Message-ID: <774@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Sep-85 13:49:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.774
Posted: Mon Sep  2 13:49:36 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 3-Sep-85 01:43:05 EDT
References: <205@kepler.UUCP>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 49

I have difficulty seeing how a net.peace group could avoid "degenerating"
into a parallel of net.politics almost immediately.  Our resources for
new newgroups are being stretched to the limit.  Has anyone else
noticed that mail delivery from some major sites has become increasingly
unreliable lately?  I strongly suspect that part of the problem is
the massive load that netnews is taking, particularly on systems with
limited numbers of ports/dialers.  I can't prove that this is the
whole problem, but it certainly seems significant.

It might be "interesting" if our resources were limitless, and if we
could support the worldwide distribution of anything, no matter how
fascinating or mundane, that anyone wanted to say.  Of course, nobody
would ever be able to wade through all the muck that would result
in a non-moderated environment, but that's a different issue entirely.

But netnews is seeing a large population increase, and I think we're
still at the base of what might ultimately be an almost exponential
growth curve.  It's becoming increasingly clear that NOTHING we do
in the current framework will save the current environment in the
long run.  It simply will (eventually) collapse under its own weight.
But in the short to middle-term, we can try keep things useful for
a while longer by trying to avoid unnecessary major new influxes of new 
discussion groups, especially when such discussion can be absorbed by
existing groups.  Frankly, if a net.peace group appeared and many
in the "peace" community with a computer or terminal suddenly started
sending stuff in (when they had nothing to do with netnews in the past)
we'd be inundated with material, arguments, counter-arguments, etc.

It seems to me that the nature of the network is such that it can
only really sustain a certain number of active contributors at any
one time.  You can theoretically let millions of people READ the
materials (just like millions watch TV), but if too many people
are trying to send IN material, and if it ALL gets "published"
(that is, a non-moderated environment) then the overload is going
to get worse and worse, both in terms of costs (both obvious
and non-obvious) and in terms of information "saturation" that
will gradually cause more and more people to stop reading netnews.

We are at a critical phase in netnews' lifecycle.  It is time to
step back and reconsider what we really want netnews to be, and
how to deal with 100's of 1000's of users in the near future,
many of whom may want to send in ALL SORTS of stuff, or start
ALL SORTS of groups.  At any given time, we all have finite
resources to work with.  Even Stargate doesn't represent
an infinite resource, though it will avoid many of the problems
that we're starting to see on netnews today.  But it's not the
whole solution by itself.

--Lauren--