Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!enea!sommar
From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Random order news
Message-ID: <3543@enea.se>
Date: 19 Jun 88 21:00:33 GMT
Organization: ENEA DATA AB, Sweden
Lines: 35

I am not any Unix hacker, nor am I any news wizard, just a ordinary
Usenetter. I realize that what I'm asking for is not easy to achieve,
yet I think the problem should be addressed. It is a nuisance, and
I am not the only one to be annoyed.

The problem: News articles seem to come in an almost random order.
Seeing the follow-up before the original is just as common as the 
opposite. Yes, there are easy explanations to this, I know, but
sometimes you could wonder. An example: There was a lot of articles
in rec.music.misc/gdead with the subject "First and last visit to
a Greatful Dead concert". I saw something 10-15 follow-ups before 
I got the original article. Some of the prematures were posted in 
June, while the original stemmed from May 24th. A friend of mine at 
Yale, told me he received them in the right order.
  Since the end of May, mcvax have had problems/overload, so the 
news feed to Europe has been (and still is) behind. You are on   
June 8th, when suddenly articles from the 14th turns up. And
back to 8th and so on. (All of them from America.)

Where is the problem?  Mcvax takes all American news from uunet, 
so the local problems shouldn't infer? Or? Is the problem within 
the American part of Usenet? But why did Yale get it in right order? 
Or is the problem at uunet or in the uunet-husc6 connection?
  Questions, question. If anyone could answer I'd be happy. If 
anyone could say "we're planning improvement in the news software",
I'd be even more grateful. (E.g. Mcvax could when taking news
from uunet in date order, instead the order of arrival to uunet.
The at least every batch could be correct.)

If you follow-up, I am glad if you mail me a copy. As I said,
the news flow here is slow. And I don't read this group normally.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog           
ENEA Data, Stockholm        
sommar@enea.UUCP            
Mail your NO votes for rec.music.rock to: jfc%Athena.mit.edu@mit-eddie.UUCP