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From: gam@amdahl.UUCP (G A Moffett)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Doomsday cometh (SHORTER)
Message-ID: <1994@amdahl.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Sep-85 02:58:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: amdahl.1994
Posted: Sat Sep  7 02:58:28 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Sep-85 02:33:49 EDT
References: <781@vortex.UUCP>
Reply-To: gam@amdahl.UUCP (G A Moffett)
Organization: Blue Mouse Trailer Resort, Hellmouth, CA
Lines: 50
Summary:  Yea, verily, but not all at once


Lauren is right in predicting the overwhelming collapse the
net could face in the future if things go on uncontrolled.

However:

	The net is not going to collapse at a given time;
	there will be warning signs, as there are now, so
	people will have time to act.

I'm sure many site administrators could easily predict what
will (and does!) happen when their site can no longer accept
the load of news they are getting:

	If you are sending full-blast news ('net' distribution),
	see if you can cut off a few leaf sites, by getting
	them other feeds (neat trick!) and/or reducing the total
	amount of news passed to them.

	Start expiring news faster (possibly selectively by newsgroup):
	14 days, then 10, then 7, then 5, then .... ?

	Reject certain newsgroups (probably the most rapidly expired
	ones) outright.

I'm not sure what the next steps are.  Since the size of the
user population is pointed at as a primary problem, I present
two scenarios:

	(My favorite:)  'net' distribution becomes a special,
	possibly priviledged, level.  Use of local/regional
	distributions is encouraged (or is default).  Thus
	you stll have Usenet but with a much smaller population.

	(Lifeboat:)  New sites will find it more and more difficult
	to find a news feed.  Growth will level off naturally
	but it will probably be much worse than now.

Because of My Favorite above, I am encouraging -- right now --
that sites establish and utilize the local/regional distributions.
I hope that people will find, as we do in the ca.all groups, that
the local atmosphere of a regional net is so much more comfortable and
easy to manage, and restores a sense of quality in writer- and
readership (probably only because of a smaller population).  And
besides, they may someday be all you have.

[ Incidently, I have proposed a distribution for the western
  US states but this hasn't quite taken off yet .... ]
-- 
Gordon A. Moffett		...!{ihnp4,cbosgd,hplabs}!amdahl!gam