Path: utzoo!utcsri!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!utfyzx!harrison
From: harrison@utfyzx.uucp (David Harrison)
Newsgroups: ont.uucp
Subject: Goodbye rec.drugs.unix-wizards
Message-ID: <1988Mar8.110408.5014@utfyzx.uucp>
Date: 8 Mar 88 16:04:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: utfyzx.1988Mar8.110408.5014
Posted: Tue Mar  8 11:04:08 1988
Reply-To: harrison@utfyzx.UUCP (David Harrison)
Distribution: ont
Organization: Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Toronto
Lines: 32


Geoff's predictions about the news flood were all too true.  And
the signal-to-noise in the deluge has been going down as fast as
the volume is going up.  And the whole network is in oscillation:
sq!bud has a daily traffic graph (using grap and troff) which is
hair raising!  

We have carried a full news feed for some time, and have in turn
been supplying a full feed to SoftQuad (sq) and the Ontario Science
Centre (oscvax).  They in turn have fed other sites.  Our disc has 
been overflowing, our ports are tied up continually, just a big mess.

Although I seriously considered doing a rm -rf on /usr/spool/news
and /usr/lib/news and posting a notice here (from another machine!)
saying "Thanks for all the fish",  I have been convinced to instead 
reduce ourselves and our feed of downstream sites to the following 
newsgroups:
   comp,sci,news,ut,can,tor,ont

I calculate that this will reduce our traffic by 40% or so.  If
Geoff's predictions continue to come true, the next leap in traffic
will make this limited distribution intolerable too.

Apologies in particular to sites downstream from utfyzx, but the
whole thing is out of hand, and the high hopes many of us had about
moderation have flopped.  I'll misc (ahem) rec.humor.funny too.
-- 
    David Harrison, Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Toronto
    {ihnp4,utzoo}!utgpu!utfyzx!harrison

    "Those who don't understand UNIX will post hourly
    to comp.unix-wizards."  (sorry Henry)