Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!ames!umd5!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!h.cc.purdue.edu!s.cc.purdue.edu!ain
From: ain@s.cc.purdue.edu (Patrick White)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: The USENET Seal of Approval
Message-ID: <2480@s.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 16 Mar 88 00:36:49 GMT
References: <1002@sbcs.sunysb.edu> <1529@sugar.UUCP> <5329@swan.ulowell.edu>
Reply-To: ain@s.cc.purdue.edu.UUCP (Patrick White)
Organization: PUCC Land, USA
Lines: 27

In article <5329@swan.ulowell.edu> page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) writes:
>We can (and should) do something with this.  One thing is to provide
>products a "USENET seal of approval," which means the product passed
>all the tests specified.  Since there are a lot of packages around,
>and a lot of people with a lot of different configurations, this
>should be easy to do.

   An interesting concept, but perhaps impractical... judging from the
number of submissions we moderators get (admittedly only "PD"), there
would probably have to be a crew of about 10-20 part-time testers, or 4-8
full time ones...
   To give a few numbers of what just moderating the PD stuff that gets
sent to us is like, we have 1.5M of compressed stuff that needs to be
tested and posted, and another 400K uncompressed sitting in my mail
box waiting for me to see it.
   There is probably more commercial software than PD being written, and
any such procedures will take much longer than downloading and test running
the code (for us, if it seems to do what it claims to and doesn't GURU,
we post it).

   I would like to see such a "seal of approval", but know the whole idea
will fall flat if the amount of software to be tested isn't estimated
accurately when everything is set up.

-- Pat White   (co-moderator comp.sources/binaries.amiga)
UUCP: k.cc.purdue.edu!ain  BITNET: PATWHITE@PURCCVM   PHONE: (317) 743-8421
U.S.  Mail:  320 Brown St. apt. 406,    West Lafayette, IN 47906