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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!sri-spam!mordor!lll-tis!mcb
From: mcb@lll-tis.arpa (Michael C. Berch)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Expiration dates on OtherRealms
Message-ID: <21622@lll-tis.arpa>
Date: Wed, 29-Jul-87 15:47:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: lll-tis.21622
Posted: Wed Jul 29 15:47:13 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 31-Jul-87 05:28:47 EDT
References: <2525@hoptoad.uucp> <2821@phri.UUCP> <1371@epimass.EPI.COM> <4040@pyramid.pyramid.com> <2164@cbmvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcb@lll-tis.arpa (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA
Lines: 22

In article <2164@cbmvax.UUCP> grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) writes:
> [...]
> It is arrogant to assume that some particular material is "so good" that it
> should override the recipient's decisions about news expirations.  Why do so?
> What would you think if the magzaines you recieve in the mail said "warning:
> do not discard before ...."?

But it simply doesn't work that way. The site admin ALWAYS has the
last say; the poster can't "override" anything. All an "Expires:"
header says is, "I [the poster] believe this material is of more
lasting value than the norm. If you [the site admin] disagree,
override it using the tools provided by expire (-e, -E)."  What's the
hassle about treating one group separately? We do two expire runs, one
for archived groups (sources, bugs) and one for everything else.
Adding a third would be no problem at all; I'm thinking of expiring
the talk and soc groups in 14 days instead of 21 to save a little
additional space and provide a bigger cushion. Jeez, it's not like you 
have to sit there and key it in every night or anything.

Michael C. Berch 
ARPA: mcb@lll-tis.arpa
UUCP: {ames,ihnp4,lll-crg,lll-lcc,mordor}!lll-tis!mcb