Aharpo.282
net.news NET.news
utzoo!duke!chico!harpo!jerry
Wed Jun 17 18:51:52 1981
comments on new netnews
This is comments on the item describing the new netnews being
written by ucbvax!Onyx:glickman
I like what was suggested but have some questions/comments.
I don't consider any of these critical and would be
happy to get a version with only the changes that have already
been announced.
What about the protocol for avoiding retransmission of
long items that a system already has? There was
discussion of this in netnews a few weeks ago.
Is the expiration date global or local. I think there
is a need for both. Some items (such as announcements
of meetings) have a natural expiration date that should
be global. Others such as fa.sf-lovers have no natural
expiration time but each system probably wants to use
some cancel them after some fixed time. We cancel them
after three weeks. I know some systems cancel them after
one. An expiration date is clearly a good idea but doesn't
solve the problem of global cancellation of items that the
author wants to have removed.
I have implemented a '-e' option that works like '-a' except
it selects items earlier than the date (perhaps it should
be -b for before, -b becomes available when there is no bitmap).
I use this mainly to search for items to be cancelled.
A little more flexibility in who can cancel items would be
convenient. How about anybody in the same group as "netnews",
or a compile time option that lets anybody cancel anything.
In any event fix the header file so that there is one #define
for the superuser and another for the user who is permitted
to cancel.
A way to force rebroadcast of some collection of items might
be useful. What I have in mind is repositories of info.
E.g. a net.groups group that contained an item describing
each newsgroup could be established. Then when somebody
new joined the net a neighbor could broadcast to the new
machine all the items in that group. There are probably
other uses.
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Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.
