Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!rochester!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!uw-entropy!scott!mcglk
From: mcglk@scott.stat.washington.edu (Ken McGlothlen)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: The death of USENET
Summary: Pardon me for opening my beeg mouth, but. . . .
Message-ID: <910@entropy.ms.washington.edu>
Date: 15 Jun 88 01:28:43 GMT
Sender: news@entropy.ms.washington.edu
Reply-To: mcglk@scott.ms.washington.edu (Ken McGlothlen)
Organization: Biostatistics Department, University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 38

Egads.

I'm not going to include some excellent postings here by several people
(including Chuq's USENET, INC. spoof, which I thought was excellent),
because I don't want to blow several dozen K repeating what you've heard
before.

Seems like Apocalypse Day around here.  First the JJ fiasco (which was
fun to watch--for the first two days), and now the inhp4 fiasco (they're
only taking a few machines out of mail-handling duty, people).  Before
that it was the comp.women fiasco (which I support, though I will admit
to having reservations about it being in the comp.* hierarchy) and the
binaries fiasco, which are both still going on.

None of this, of course, means that USENET is dying, or that USENET will
need major surgery in order to survive.  I agree--with considerable
reservations--with Chuq:  some of the stuff should go.  But first, an
alternate means has to be found.  I do *not* support the complete lobotomy
of the talk.*, rec.* and other "fun" newsgroups, but I *do* support an
alternate way of handling binaries and sources.  First off, I feel they
should be moderated.  Second, I do not feel that they should be restricted
to one type of machine or OS or language.  Third, if one or the other
has to go, toss comp.binaries.*.

Isn't there anyone willing to put up the time, effort, and moola of
setting up an archive site?  SIMTEL-20 works beautifully, but apparently,
there are a lot of people that don't get it.  Compuserve would be
incredibly impractical for me, on the other hand.  BITnet LISTSERVers I
can get to fine--can't anyone else?

Back to my main point:  Put away your ascension robes.  This isn't the
Last Days of USENET.  Not even close.  If USENET can survive JJ (and
the conflagration that brought), USENET can certainly survive just about
anything.

			--Ken McGlothlen
			  mcglk@max.acs.washington.edu
			  mcglk@scott.ms.washington.edu