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From: control@almsa-1 (William Martin)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Causes on the net... (Suggestion to limit traffic)
Message-ID: <198@almsa-1>
Date: Wed, 4-Sep-85 17:27:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: almsa-1.198
Posted: Wed Sep  4 17:27:23 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Sep-85 03:37:03 EDT
References: <205@kepler.UUCP> <774@vortex.UUCP> <2978@sdcc3.UUCP>
Reply-To: control@almsa-1.UUCP (William Martin)
Organization: ALMSA-1, St. Louis, MO
Lines: 30

I really think it is unlikely that any real effort will be made to
install a limit of "number of characters posted per user-ID" or "number
of postings per day per user-ID" or the like, in order to reduce network
traffic. (I recall seeing many such comments over the past years, and
they never inspired anyone to actually implement the idea.) However,
just in case somebody decides to assign this as a class project or
something and it really gets done, let me mention one factor (one which
clouds many aspect of net usage): reliability.

Not all net users operate on hosts or with connections that have high
reliability. Some have to take advantage of [shall we say] "openings",
when the net is up and news is flowing, to read new news and post a lot
of things that have been simmering in their minds or are inspired by the
just-read news items. Then, they will seemingly vanish for days or
weeks, simply because their news feed is down, or one up the stream is
down. Keep this in mind when designing any algorithms to limit traffic
per person. Assign a long-enough time period to take into account these
inevitable surges and troughs; maybe two weeks or a month, and have your
software calculate the total number of characters posted over that whole
period, not just per that day or that uucp connection.

Also, it would be well to use "number of characters" as the determining
factor, not "number of postings" or other counts. If this is done, and
well-publicized, it can also contribute to eliminating the glut of
"included text" in postings, if everyone knows that including 3500
characters of Joe Blow's ramblings on wombats just to add "Amen,
brother!" on the end will subtract 3500+ characters from his or her own
allotment.

Will