Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!hc!lll-winken!uunet!attcan!lsuc!ncrcan!ziebmef!cks
From: cks@ziebmef.uucp (Chris Siebenmann)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Suggesstion for C NEWS and 3.0 NEWS
Message-ID: <1989Mar19.000350.18021@ziebmef.uucp>
Date: 19 Mar 89 05:03:47 GMT
References: <1522@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> <803@telly.UUCP>
Reply-To: cks@ziebmef.UUCP (Chris Siebenmann)
Distribution: na
Organization: Ziebmef Public Access Unix, Toronto, Ontario
Lines: 56

In article <803@telly.UUCP> evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) writes:
| In article <1522@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>, John G Dobnick writes:
| >I suggest a set of n.a.n articles be included in each full news distribution.

 Excellent suggestion; I third it. Feeds for a new site should also
take responsibility for sending the new site the current messages in
n.a.n (everyone has 30+ day expires on news.announce.newusers already,
right?). 

|>I also propose the following change to any and ALL newsreader programs.
|>	When a new user is detected (perhaps by an empty .newsrc file?),
|>	create a "prototype" .newsrc  file for that user which displays
|>	news.announce.newusers FIRST!

 It seems to be a well-kept secret that (at least for rn, readnews, and
vnews -- those are the only ones we have here) the order of newsgroups 
in /usr/lib/news/active is the order in which they will appear in a 
newly-created .newsrc. I exploited this feature when I set up our news 
system to place various newsgroups up near the top (such as a newsgroup 
for local bulletins, our local general conversations one, and 
news.announce.newusers).

|>	Of secondary importance, most other newsgroups should be marked
|>	UN-subscribed.  Exceptions would be selected local groups and such
|>	things as news.lists, and the various "important" groups (the
|>	"general" groups, news.announce.important, etc.).
| Good idea! I would suggest taking a hint from Xenix, which has a number of
| default actions stored away in /etc/default/*. Perhaps a small feature
| could allow the news administrator at a site to create a prototype .newsrc,
| which would be used for each news reader without an existing .newsrc file.

 I'm not completely comfortable with this idea; I suspect a lot of
people simply wouldn't find many newsgroups because they have no idea
at all that they exist. Perhaps what we need is a special flag in the
.newsrc entry for groups that causes the newsreader to only offer them 
to readers (along with an explanation of what the newsgroup is for) when 
they're caught up on all the other normally-flagged newsgroups; of course,
after a newsgroup has been read the first time, this flag would be
stripped. 

 Thus what would happen is that the first time reader would go through
all of n.a.newusers and whatever appropriate newsgroups, and then rn (say)
would prompt with something like:

**** N unread articles in comp.sys.amiga (Commodore Amiga: info&uses, but
     no programs.)
     Do you want to try this newsgroup? [ny]

(note that the description is from /usr/lib/news/newsgroups, and the
default is NOT to read the group).

-- 
	"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