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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ukma!david
From: david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Vote Fraud and Newsgroups
Message-ID: <2142@ukma.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 6-Sep-85 13:19:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: ukma.2142
Posted: Fri Sep  6 13:19:18 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Sep-85 13:29:22 EDT
References: <828@burl.UUCP> <3500005@ccvaxa>
Reply-To: david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover)
Organization: Univ. of KY Mathematical Sciences
Lines: 41

In article <3500005@ccvaxa> preece@ccvaxa.UUCP writes:
>In what sense does a mailing list do a better job?  (1) It is less
>visible to new readers, since it isn't just there to be browsed on
>every site. (2) The traffic still has to be passed along the route
>to each reader, as mail.  In some cases that will mean MORE net traffic
>than if the notes had been passed as news.  All you save is storage at
>intervening sites, which could as well be restricted by a short
>expiration time, and traffic on links not leading to readers of the
>mailing list.  I wonder how significant that is.

I don't think so.  Take a newsgroup like fa.railroad for instance.
I'm fairly certain nobody here reads that group and none of our
downstream sites do either.  What purpose is there to our receiving
that newsgroup.  (It doesn't have to be fa.railroad, say that NOBODY
around here had a mac instead, then we'd be talking about a huge group).

Or lets change it a little.  Somebody (one site) downstream wants to
read the group.  Why should I pay long distance (and all the people
between me and the downstream site) so they can read the group.  Wouldn't
it be better for them to connect to my feed SOLEY for the purpose of
picking up that group?

Take that to an extreme and you have mailing lists.

Solutions:

(1) Keep some newsgroups that are widely used (and easily justified).
    I'm talking unix-wizards, net.lang.all, mod.all, net.announce.all,
    net.misc, etc.  Then frequently announce new mailing lists in
    something appropriate among the global groups you keep.
(2) Set up some sort of "tree" which minimally passes articles
    to the outlying sites.

    Maybe some software could be set up to help with this?
-- 
--- David Herron
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Hackin's in me blood.  My mother was known as Miss Hacker before she married!