Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!ucbvax!decwrl!spar!snjsn1!bilbo!greg From: greg@bilbo (Greg Wageman) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: Call for discussion: comp.sources.archives Message-ID: <392@snjsn1.SJ.ATE.SLB.COM> Date: 22 Aug 88 16:47:40 GMT References: <222@pigs.UUCP> <6031@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <236@pigs.UUCP> <478@c10sd1.StPaul.NCR <5653@rpp386.UUCP> Sender: news@SJ.ATE.SLB.COM Reply-To: greg%sentry@spar.slb.com (Greg Wageman) Organization: Schlumberger ATE, San Jose, CA Lines: 60 In article <5653@rpp386.UUCP> jfh@rpp386.UUCP (The Beach Bum) writes: >In article <389@snjsn1.SJ.ATE.SLB.COM> greg%sentry@spar.slb.com (Greg Wageman) writes: >>In all of the *moderated* comp.sources groups to which I subscribe, >>the moderator periodically posts information regarding submissions and >>archive sites. I have found a number of archive servers in this >>manner without difficulty. > >not everyone can find an archive server, or even an archive. the very >fact that archive listings for sources in the usenet archives are needed >is the very existence of comp.sources.wanted. I'm not sure I understand this. I think you're saying that comp.sources.archives would serve mostly those who *don't* subscribe to the comp.sources newsgroups, since regular subscribers are already being told where the archives are. >the trouble is, not everyone bothers to look through the moderated >sources groups. i owe this thought to someone else - wading through >all of the non-archive related info in comp.sources.wanted is a pain. >this would centralize all of the archive requests into one newsgroup. >it would also provide a forum for posting information regarding system >down times, such as simtel20 which recently went down. That's certainly another useful purpose for the group. It might make a good place for the sysadmins to post things like "The following twenty files have just been added to the Blurfl archives..." However if "not everyone bothers to look through the moderated source groups", then it's their problem if they can't find what their looking for, isn't it? A certain amount of effort is required to use USENET, after all. >all in all, i suggest anyone who thinks people are using the information >which rich $alz and others provide should take a look at comp.sources.wanted >to see how much attention people pay those postings. Whoa, now, your reasoning is getting faulty! First of all, just because you've seen postings from people who don't know where to look for something doesn't mean that there aren't hundreds of people successfully (and quietly) using the archives sites every day. Ask the administrators of those sites how active they are. I suggest that the people who post such inquiries are being lazy, and letting the net do their work for them. Because some people choose to *ignore* information which is there, is *not* a good reason to replicate it somewhere else! Creating comp.sources.archives wouldn't guarantee the end of comp.sources.wanted postings to the effect of, "Does anyone know where I can get a copy of the gribnitz utility?". If a site can't get to the archives anyway, knowing where they are, what they contain and when they're up won't help a bit. However, as I said in the posting from which you excerpted, I think that the comp.sources.archives group has enough usefulness for other reasons that it should be created. Greg Wageman ARPA: greg%sentry@spar.slb.com Schlumberger Technologies BIX: gwage 1601 Technology Drive CIS: 74016,352 San Jose, CA 95110 GEnie: GWAGEMAN (408) 437-5198 UUCP: ...!decwrl!spar!sentry!greg ------------------ Opinions expressed herein are solely the responsibility of the author.