Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!bellcore!faline!ulysses!terminus!nyssa
From: nyssa@terminus.UUCP (The Prime Minister)
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: these sites have not filed an arbitron report
Message-ID: <1910@terminus.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Nov-87 07:59:10 EST
Article-I.D.: terminus.1910
Posted: Mon Nov  2 07:59:10 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Nov-87 22:42:40 EST
References: <11960@decwrl.DEC.COM> <9307@tekecs.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: nyssa@terminus.UUCP (The Scrapyard... I'm sorry, Valeyard, force of habit, I apologize.)
Distribution: na
Organization: Terminus
Lines: 63
Xref: mnetor news.admin:1327 comp.sources.d:1518

In article <9307@tekecs.TEK.COM> snoopy@doghouse.gwd.tek.com (Snoopy) writes:
>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.

Well... arbitron source was distributed with news 2.11.  When I installed
2.11, I ran arbitron.  Funny thing was, the only mods I had to make were
to insure a correct mail path.  It took, maybe, 15 seconds to do.  Then
I popped the sucker into cron, another 30 seconds worth of work.  Gee,
that didn't seem like too much...

>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.

I am sys-admin for a site which currently has three readers.  I suspect
that qualifies as "very few".  I see no need to be worried about 
letting people know which groups I do and don't read, that may be
obvious just from where I post.

In fact, with the gradual increase of PC's on the net, collecting
statistics from this set of users is even more valuable.  This 
machine does not carry every newsgroup, which affects propogation
data.


Of course, the real question being raised is the necessity of posting
arbitron source regularly, not the validity of the experiment.  I do
have some observations on that.

Over the summer, I formed (with the help of several other people) an
archive of information related to Doctor Who which was posted regularly
to rec.arts.drwho.  This information was posted monthly, with a month
long expire period.  It included information on frequently asked
questions, a companion list, and other goodies.  Included among these
goodies was a troff program guide which was written by me last year,
and modified to be more universal by Mike Brown (brown@nicmad).  (We
have also been maintaining the guide and modifying it as more
information is received.)  The latest version of the guide is 63694
characters in length, not including news headers.  With other files,
the archive postings were pushing 150K, far too much to do on a monthly
basis, so the procedure was stopped.

Now, there is a set of monthly postings for rec.arts.drwho.  The three
messages are:  an explanation of the monthly postings and archive
system, the set of frequently asked questions, and a list of
conventions.  Other information is stored in a set of easily 
retrievable files on terminus.  There is a comment to that effect
in the monthly postings.

Moral of the story:  Perhaps the arbitron source should be similarly
archived, and made available by request.  A pointer to the source 
would be mentioned in the explanatory posting.  If there should be
a major change (Would C news require any changes?), then it should
be reposted.

To those people who say things like, "We think the stuff is valuable,
but we won't participate because Brian wastes net resources", don't you
realise that that is a childish attitude?  What do you, or anyone else
gain?  You entrench your position, Brian (may) entrench his, and nothing
is gained.  The flames generated over these arbitron source postings
and already probably larger in volume than a year's worth of the
postings.