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From: falk@sun.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.misc,news.groups
Subject: Re: First Time On News
Message-ID: <9563@sun.uucp>
Date: Sat, 22-Nov-86 15:35:27 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.9563
Posted: Sat Nov 22 15:35:27 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Nov-86 04:40:51 EST
References: <7336@utzoo.UUCP> <4388@mimsy.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 31
Xref: watmath news.misc:57 news.groups:33

> Henry Spencer writes: [first he quotes someone else though]
> >[regarding putting mod.announce.newusers first in order]
> >> And I say that this will benefit at least *some* of the new users of
> >> the net.  This will at least help *those* individuals onto the path
> >> of net.correctness...
> 
> >True.  But it won't get all the new users "automatically", as you suggested
> >in your original posting.
> 
> >On the contrary.  Most new net users are unaware of the ability to
> >unsubscribe, and think that what they get is what's listed in the "options
> >-n" line in their .newsrc.  This plus the massive volume of network traffic
> >strongly encourages them *not* to just put "all" in that line, which means
> >they get only the groups they explicitly select.
> 
> Uh, rn doesn't start up that way.  If you just type in "rn", you are
> initially subscribed to *everything*.  If you don't want to read everything,
> you *have* to learn how to unsubscribe.  Therefore, putting newusers first
> is a big win for rn, since they will see it first (and hopefully figure out
> that it might be useful).
> 
While we're on the subject, how about setting the expiration times on the
net.newusers articles to a month instead of the default (two weeks?).
That way, the articles would always be resident on the disk, and new
users who start reading late in the month won't be in the dark while they
wait for the articles to be posted again.

-- 
		-ed falk, sun microsystems
terrorist, cryptography, DES, drugs, cipher, secret, decode, NSA, CIA, NRO.
(The above is food for the NSA line eater.)