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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!ljdickey
From: ljdickey@water.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Dead groups
Message-ID: <1243@water.waterloo.edu>
Date: Mon, 9-Nov-87 09:04:54 EST
Article-I.D.: water.1243
Posted: Mon Nov  9 09:04:54 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Nov-87 02:42:09 EST
References: <8711061915.AA28019@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 49

In article <8711061915.AA28019@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> IHLS400@INDYCMS (Holly Lee Stowe) writes:
> 
> >"Why are the binary and source news groups so dead?"
> 
> It seems they are dead because people insist on posting programs
> to the Info mailing list instead.

This is not the whole story.  Recently, for various reasons, it seems
that people have sent things to the moderator of these groups and
they are not getting distributed.  I was happy to see the DCfmt programs
posted to this group.  There is no other group for the *sender* to
post them to this net.

As you may know,  I have called for a change of rules in posting
to the two groups,

	comp.binaries.atari.st
	comp.sources.atari.st

I think that no overall benefit has come to users by having these
groups be moderated, as they are now.  The author of some slick new
program should be able post there and not bother you.  Please add
your voice of support for my position, and I will add mine to yours.

> I'm just as interested as
> the next person in obtaining these programs, but PLEASE let me
> do it in my own time from one of the file servers!!  

The file servers are still not *easily* accessible to users outside the
BITNET world.  Yes, I can get files, but it is still a struggle
for me, on a non EBCDIC system that does not run TRUE BLUE software,
to decode these things because of the use of LRECLs, problems with
character translations, and the use of files with very long lines.
Things that have appeared on the net as nice flat files readable and
decodable are now stored in a form that is a nightmare to work with.

>    ...     Please show
> some consideration to those of us who cannot simply skip those
> messages in which we have no interest currently as I assume you
> can do in the newsgroups.  

Why not just scan forward to the next "Subject" line?   :-)


-- 
 L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo. 
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