Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84; site plus5.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!mgnetp!we53!busch!wuphys!plus5!hokey
From: hokey@plus5.UUCP (Hokey)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Instructions for net.general (quotes at end)
Message-ID: <585@plus5.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Feb-85 23:46:38 EST
Article-I.D.: plus5.585
Posted: Mon Feb 11 23:46:38 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Feb-85 02:49:56 EST
References: <336@ssc-vax.UUCP> <711@cbosgd.UUCP> <3283@alice.UUCP> <354@ssc-vax.UUCP> <1328@t4test.UUCP>
Reply-To: hokey@plus5.UUCP (Hokey)
Organization: Plus Five Computer Services, St. Louis
Lines: 29
Summary: 

In article <1328@t4test.UUCP> chip@t12tst.UUCP writes:
>Someone suggested creating a handful of magic article numbers which
>would contain the answers to these common questions.  The magic
>articles would always be there and would be the first thing a new user
>would see in the newsgroup.  I made a suggestion which would also work
>on this problem:  use a long expiration date.

Not quite; new sites would not have the articles on them.  Furthermore,
even if the articles were periodically retransmitted, they would not get
past the first site which had them on line (duplicate article ...).

Next, until many of us are satisfied with the behavior of expire we will
continue to run "find" scripts which delete all of the articles which
are "too" old.  (OK, I guess we could hack the script to ignore articles
which met the specs for "keepers".)

We could always try do something with a new control message, but I don't
know anybody who would want the volume of mail generated when all the
"old" news versions reject the unknown control message.

Note that these problems would mostly vanish if we had a Wonderful ihave/
sendme protocol.  We could even use this same mechanism for automatically
maintaining the map information.

I can't wait 'til I get enough time to look at sendmail, xfernews, small
furry animals with great big teeth...
-- 
Hokey           ..ihnp4!plus5!hokey
		  314-725-9492