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From: snoopy@doghouse.gwd.tek.com (Snoopy)
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: these sites have not filed an arbitron report
Message-ID: <9307@tekecs.TEK.COM>
Date: Wed, 28-Oct-87 13:04:28 EST
Article-I.D.: tekecs.9307
Posted: Wed Oct 28 13:04:28 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Oct-87 14:48:12 EST
References: <11960@decwrl.DEC.COM>
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In article <11960@decwrl.DEC.COM> reid@decwrl.dec.com (Brian Reid) writes:
>Various people have flamed at me for periodic repostings of the arbitron
>program sources. I have absolutely no intention of stopping this practice
>just because a few malcontents don't like it. 

What side of the bed did *you* get up on this morning?  Until I read
this I always thought of you as a very reasonable person.  [Okay, so
that doesn't take much relative to the rest of usenet. :-)  ]

>    2) You run nntp/rrn. The design of the nntp protocols is deficient; 
>       they don't permit any kind of readership determination. Until the 
>       nntp protocols get revised to permit readership measurement, we
>       just aren't going to hear from your site. Sorry.

Deficient?  Just because they don't have hooks for *your* program?

>    3) You are a VMS site or a TOPS-20 site or an IBM site or something like
>       that. Again, what can I say. mod.newprod, or whatever it is called
>       these days since the "reorganization", regularly carries announcements
>       of $5000 Unix boxes  :-)

Not everyone has an extra $5000 to spend on new hardware so that they
can participate in the arbitron.  Give me a break!

>    4) You are an AT&T site, and therefore have no site administrator and
>       no control over your news software and in fact you're busy chasing
>       down articles about dinettes for sale in New Jersey that got posted to
>       Australia and Japan.

You mean they actually chase those down?  :-)

>Otherwise I'd like to hear from you, especially if the reason is that
>you're a lazy person who has never quite gotten around to doing it.

Excuse me?  Not having time to set up arbitron, which I see as a very
low priority project at best, does not imply that someone is lazy.
I think you owe an apology to a lot of overworked SAs out there.

Until today, my reason was: (a) I'm running nntp, (b) I don't have time,
(c) 1 or 2 users missing out of n-thousand isn't going to hurt, (d)
all of the above.  Starting now, my reason is (a) I'm not going to
until Brian stops wasting all that net bandwidth (and money, and people's
time hitting 'n', and disk space, and...) reposting the sources so often.
And then I'll think about it.

Another point, for systems with a single, or very few readers:  Do you
really want to send out the information on what newsgroups you read?
There's a privacy issue here.

The arbitron stats are interesting and useful.  Attempting to force
every machine on the net to gather and send data for it isn't going
to go over too well.

I vote for reposting the sources no more than once a year.

Snoopy
tektronix!doghouse.gwd!snoopy
snoopy@doghouse.gwd.tek.com

Arbitron sources?  We don't need no stinking arbitron sources!