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Path: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!pesnta!amd!amdcad!lll-crg!topaz!cord!ebh
From: ebh@cord.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.news.adm
Subject: Re: If You Love This Usenet
Message-ID: <262@cord.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-May-86 16:34:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: cord.262
Posted: Tue May 27 16:34:24 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 28-May-86 19:25:59 EDT
References: <2140@cbosgd.UUCP> <252@ubc-cs.UUCP> <402@pyramid.UUCP>
Reply-To: ebh@cord.UUCP (Ed Horch)
Followup-To: net.news.adm
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Liberty Corner
Lines: 32
Keywords: expiration
Xref: decwrl net.news.group:5105 net.news.adm:767

In article <402@pyramid.UUCP> csg@pyramid.UUCP (Carl S. Gutekunst) writes:
>Hey, a lot of sites already have a much simpler mechanism: They let
>/usr/spool/news overflow the disk once in a while....
>:-), sortof....

There seems to be one type of usenet site that nobody's addressed here.
I'm talking about sites whose news connections cost nearly nothing in
connect charges, because they're all local calls, or whatever.

On these systems, disk space seems to be the limiting factor, even 
with scheduled expiration.

What I propose for this type of problem is to have inews and arbitron
interact:  if arbitron knows that nobody reads net.X at this site,
pass the articles to all downstream sites, the expire them immediately.
This way, everybody gets all articles, but they don't hang around 
gathering dust (which is bad for disk drives :-).

It may even be valid to check all .newsrc files, looking for newsgroups
that nobody's read in some magic number of days.

The question I don't have an answer to offhand is this:  "After six 
months, I want to start reading net.Y again.  How can I get back up
to date with what's going on?"

There are other ways to make expiration more intelligent as well, most
of which could be implemented by hand:  2 weeks for net.A and net.B,
3 days for net.C, 10 minutes for net.jokes.. :-)

Just a thought.

-Ed Horch    {ihnp4,cbosgd,allegra}!cord!ebh