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From: chuq@sun.uucp (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group
Subject: Re: Greg Woods/Brian Reid flaming match
Message-ID: <3366@sun.uucp>
Date: Sat, 15-Mar-86 20:22:22 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.3366
Posted: Sat Mar 15 20:22:22 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Mar-86 03:46:28 EST
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Xref: watmath net.news:4676 net.news.group:5225

> Greg (mostly) and Brian please stop flaming each other in public.
> Why does everyone have to knock anything constructive that someone does?

Yes, please do! It may sound like sour grapes, but any time anyone tries to
do something FOR the net, they get stomped on. Here's a vote of support for
Brian for being willing to TRY something, which is better than 99% of us are
willing to do. Who CARES if it fails? (not that I think it will...)

I think what Brian is doing is quite interesting; some of the numbers are
fascinating, especially the cost/reader figures (imagine what we could do if
we got rid of the top four groups) (don't flame, I'm just dreaming)

I do see two places where the statistics are probably skewed from a net-wide
'average', whatever that means. First, the stats are most likely to be drawn
from the sites with SA's that put time into maintaining their news systems,
and an active SA implies a more knowledgable reader list because there is
someone to talk to about learning the ropes (and hopefully riding herd a
bit). This isn't bad -- if people are too lazy to maintain their systems
I don't see why we should take their 'needs' into account -- they certainly
don't take the needs of the network into account.

Second, and more dangerous is the fact that there is no provision for aging
the .newsrc in Brian's programs. If someone logged on and read news once 9
months ago, it holds the same weight as a daily reader. I suggested at one
time that .newsrc's older than 30 days simply be ignored, but it is
non-trivial to implement in Brian's system. It DOES modify the readership,
though, and should be kept in mind.

Despite that, I think the figures are prety close to right on and just
validate what I thought for a long while -- USENET is rather out of control,
and there are a very few write-mostly groups and write-mostly people that
are causing it. Oh, well...

chuq

-- 
:From catacombs of Castle Tarot:        Chuq Von Rospach 
chuq@sun.ARPA				FidoNet: 125/84
CompuServe: 73317,635
{decwrl,decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,pyramid,seismo,ucbvax}!sun!chuq

I used to worry about splitting my infinitives until I realized that most
people had never heard of them.