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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Expiration dates on OtherRealms
Message-ID: <853@looking.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Jul-87 11:22:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: looking.853
Posted: Tue Jul 28 11:22:07 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Aug-87 01:30:32 EDT
References: <2525@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 33

I agree 100% with Mr. Gilmore.  mag.otherrealms should definitely not
be posted with a special expiry date.  Chuq's reasons (especially the arbitron
one) are just plain silly.

Because we won't be able to stop people from abusing expiry dates (even
moderators) the answer may have to come from smarter expire software.

Perhaps expire software should take a list of groups, and be given parameters
for the group.  (pattern matching, like "rec.all" would apply)

Parameters like maxiumum size of the directory in bytes, whether to ignore the
expiry date, default and MAXIMUM expiry periods, and perhaps something like
a priority number (this group is boring, get rid of it quickly).  Others might
include maximum number of articles in the group etc.

Chuq: News is for the readers, not for the posters.  If your readers can't
catch your fanzine during the default expiry for their machine, have them
take it up with their sysadmin, not you.  (You can have some groups expire
more slowly, even with current expire.)  You are correct that you shouldn't
be mailing off lots of copies to people who miss an issue, but that doesn't
suggest you userp the sysadmin's position of deciding how long news stays
around.

I always thought of expiry dates as being something of the reverse.  You
put a SHORTER expiry date on an article that you know won't be meaningful in
more than a few days.  This you do as a courtesy to the readers.

News is so bad now that with my 70 megabyte filesystem and a feed that doesn't
send me most of the big groups, I still have to expire in 2-3 days on most
groups, and 1 day on several.  Not trusting expire, I now just do a "find" that
kills anything older than 4 days.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473