Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!attcan!lsuc!ncrcan!ziebmef!cks
From: cks@ziebmef.uucp (Chris Siebenmann)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: junk ->/dev/null
Message-ID: <1989Mar18.232635.17282@ziebmef.uucp>
Date: 19 Mar 89 04:26:34 GMT
References: <1075@bnlux0.bnl.gov>
Reply-To: cks@ziebmef.UUCP (Chris Siebenmann)
Organization: Ziebmef Public Access Unix, Toronto, Ontario
Lines: 33


 I can only see two problems with this:
1. you'll never notice newsgroups whose creation your site has missed
2. if an article comes in that winds up in junk and some other groups,
   the news system could decide to queue it for downstream feeds as
   junk/<whatever> (which wouldn't exist) as opposed to the article
   number in a newsgroup you keep around.
   [this may be a Cnews-ism, and is perhaps a problem in the news software.]

 However, doing this probably won't gain you much, and what you do
gain can be gained in a simpler manner. Consider why articles wind up
in junk:

1. you don't have any of the newsgroups they're in
	a. because you missed the newgroup message for the groups, in which
	   case you want the article anyways and should create the newsgroup
	b. they're in newsgroups you don't want at all, in which case you
	   should tell your upstream feed to turn them off and save
	   modem time.
2. they're too old, in which case you may want to figure out *why* and may
   want to see them anyways.
3. they're crossposted between some groups you do get and some you
   don't. Here deleting the article in junk buys you no gain in disk
   space, because it will just stay around in the other groups.

 On a well-configured news site, anything except #3 should be very
rare and easily handled by hand.

-- 
	"Though you may disappear, you're not forgotten here
	 And I will say to you, I will do what I can do"
Chris Siebenmann		uunet!{utgpu!moore,attcan!telly}!ziebmef!cks
cks@ziebmef.UUCP	     or	.....!utgpu!{,ontmoh!,ncrcan!brambo!}cks