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From: fair@ucbarpa.BERKELEY.EDU (Erik E. &)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: proposed new structure for `fa' groups
Message-ID: <10688@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 17-Oct-85 10:16:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10688
Posted: Thu Oct 17 10:16:10 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Oct-85 04:34:46 EDT
References: <10523@ucbvax.ARPA> <228@epicen.UUCP> <10569@ucbvax.ARPA> <13213@Glacier.ARPA>
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Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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In article <13213@Glacier.ARPA> reid@Glacier.UUCP (Brian Reid) writes:
>I feel quite strongly that
> (a) You should not muck with the names of ARPAnet groups
> (b) Some distinction should be made between "fa" and "mod" groups.
>
>It is a matter of factual record that
> (c) There is no technological need to switch from "fa" to "mod".
>
>Elaboration:
>
>(a) The name of laser-lovers is "laser-lovers", and that's all
>there is to it. Any attempt to change its name is fraudulent. Do you want to
>change the name of "Life" magazine to "Weekly-cute-pictures-and-stories"
>because it doesn't have enough biology? Be serious. Leave the names of the
>USENET versions of things equal to the ARPAnet names of them.

There is no excuse for `cute' names. There is no defense for `cute'
names.  `Cute' names exist to tickle the egos of an `in' group of
people who understand them. `Cute' names cause confusion, and make the
network LESS approachable, because there is that much more to learn.
The magazine analogy does not hold because the media are not equivalent.

Perhaps I should send you the letters that I have gotten which said
(approximately): ``Gee, I really did think that sun-spots was an astronomy
related mailing list!''

>(b) Lauren is 100% right about the need to maintain a distinction. Since
>Glacier is on the ARPAnet, I reject the "fa.*" newsgroups from all of our
>feeds, and gateway them in myself. I intend to keep doing this even if this
>name change takes place; it will be a lot more work and a lot more
>error-prone if I can no longer just put a "!fa.all" in the sys file. We in
>turn feed about 30 sites, and they get the gatewayed-through-Glacier version
>of the fa groups and not the "real" version.

I have already answered Lauren Weinstein's objection to his
satisfaction, why not to yours?  I have also already privately offered
to send you the material directly over the ARPANET as part of the
multiple insertion system that I will be setting up after the name
change takes place.  I gather that you consider this insufficient?

With regard to your private gateway of the `fa' groups, you took on the
responsibility to track changes made by the `official' gateways, in
order to maintain your gateway properly, when you started it in the
first place. Granted that there have been almost zero changes in almost
two years, this still does not absolve you of that responsibility.

>(c) All "fa" groups can be handled as moderated groups. All you have to do is
>make an entry in the "moderators" file, and all reputable news software will
>handle it like a moderated group regardless of what its name is.

There is still some cruft running around in the software relating to
`fa' newsgroups which Rick Adams would like to be able to remove for
the 2.10.3 release, no doubt to the considerable relief of the people
running netnews on PDP-11 (and similar) systems with limited address
spaces. In addition, the `fa' abstraction has never been properly
supported, as the `mod' abstraction is. People STILL post things to the
`fa' newsgroups when they shouldn't. This is impossible with `mod'.


By way of warning to the network, the control messages to create the
new `mod' groups will go out tomorrow (18 Oct 85) at midnight pacific
daylight time. I will shift the gateway at the same time, and follow
those up with remove group control messages four days later (Monday).

	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucbarpa.BERKELEY.EDU