Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!robohack!woods
From: woods@robohack.UUCP (Greg A. Woods)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Dynamic "smart" expiration?
Summary: a practical beginning
Keywords: goal driven, space based
Message-ID: <1990Jan3.132122.10608@robohack.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jan 90 13:21:22 GMT
References: <1989Dec27.033817.9953@smsc.sony.com> <1989Dec28.063932.13720@robohack.UUCP>
	<68634@looking.on.ca> <1989Dec29.213539.2801@utzoo.uucp> <6118@yunexus.UUCP>
	<69448@looking.on.ca> <1120@utoday.UUCP> <`QF52&@rpi.edu> <69654@looking.on.ca>
	<89Dec31.171430es
Organization: R. H. Lathwell Associates:  Elegant Communications, Inc.
Lines: 39

In article <7171@drilex.UUCP> dricejb@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson drilex1) writes:
> Might I point out that those sites with 100 machines mounting /news, or 100
> machines accessing news via nntp, aren't going to benefit from newsrc-based
> expiration anyway?  In a population as large as 100, the union of all
> newsgroups-subscribed-to is likely to be large. Also, somebody is probably
> out of town, so they're way behind in that group.
> 
> It would seem to me that newsrc-based expiration would really only be 
> interesting when there are fewer than 20 readers or so.

And here, where there are fewer than 10 readers, one of them being me,
I don't want to have newsrc driven expires.  I want a space based,
goal driven, expire!  0.25 :-) I think such a beast would also be quite
useful for both large and small sites.  In looking at the references
line I'd guess that only 1/2 of the participants in this thread are on
systems running C News.  I think this shows that the problem is with
the basic idiom behind the expire control file, not with any
particular expire.

I think all of this discussion has been interesting, but it has
wandered far from what seems practical and feasible, at least in the
short term.  Once we get expire to work in the way that we (I) have
been thinking about news expiry since day one, then maybe we can think
of ways to control this new expire to suite the local culture.

Since there was such a volume of discussion on this topic, I will
assume that I'm not the only one not happy with the current state of
affairs.  Since I have also spent some time inside C News, (working on
porting, installation features, and tuning, since the alpha version),
I will think about implementing a scheme similar to what I discribed.
I won't guarantee I'll get anywhere, as I have several dozen projects
on the go now, but I'll try.  If anyone has any really terrific ideas
for a space based, goal driven, expire, let me know.  If anyone is
already doing this, please let me know.
-- 
						Greg A. Woods

woods@{robohack,gate,tmsoft,ontmoh,utgpu,gpu.utcs.Toronto.EDU,utorgpu.BITNET}
+1 416 443-1734 [h]   +1 416 595-5425 [w]   VE3-TCP   Toronto, Ontario; CANADA