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From: chuq@plaid.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: A thought about USENET.
Message-ID: <21148@sun.uucp>
Date: Mon, 15-Jun-87 19:03:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.21148
Posted: Mon Jun 15 19:03:30 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Jun-87 01:18:28 EDT
References: <2577@psuvax1.UUCP> <1408@oliveb.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: Fictional Reality, uLtd
Lines: 53
Keywords: Archive sources free-speech

In article <1408@oliveb.UUCP> jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry F Aguirre) writes:
>It has been suggested that we just ignore the non-source postings to
>source groups.  I think we are all used to skipping articles that we
>don't find interesting so this is a suggestion I could live with, except
>for one thing.
>
>My site, as well as many others, save the source groups.  Currently I
>have to regularly go through the archive directory and delete the
>extraneous postings.  I want to keep part 5 of your new editor but I
>definitely DON'T want to keep somebody's request for a reposting of part 5.

It's funny, but long, long ago, before moderated groups and high volumes, I
archived source groups to tape.  I did this for over two years, as a matter
of fact, taking the time to zap all the garbage messages and the like
(believe it or not, garbage in sources groups isn't a new phenomenon --
people have always been idiotic and stubborn about posting to the wrong
groups).  I mean, you never know when you'll want a copy of ispell version
0.4 or top version 3.1.

I finally sat down and looked at (1) the time I was spending maintaining a
source archive and (2) the number of times I actually USED the archive.  I
found (and I'll bet that this is a common occurance) that if I didn't do
something with it when it was posted (either install it or store it until I
had time) I never used it.  In all that time, with (at one time) 25+
megabytes of net.sources archive, I went back to the archive exactly once.

So I did the only logical thing -- I turned off archiving.  Eventually I
reused the tape, and to date I've never missed anything I once thought was
so important.  Putting together archives is a Good Thing.  But, frankly, how
often do you find you need something off of it?  How many gigabytes of disk
and tape are being taken up by archives of all of this stuff that nobody
needs and that most archivers probably have forgotten they have?

It's my belief that the sources groups are great for posting source, but
I'm not at all sure that keeping those sources around is really worth it.
In fact, it is probably MUCH cheaper on a dollar basis to simply dump
everything to tape rather than spend a couple of man-hours cleaning up the
archive -- people, especially unix people, are relatively expensive pieces
of equiptment; tape is cheap.

I mean, all of this is well and good, but is it worth all the time we're
wasting arguing about it? Or are we arguing because we like to argue?

chuq 






Chuq Von Rospach	chuq@sun.COM		Delphi: CHUQ

Now, where did my ex-wife put my Fairy Dust?