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