From: Bill Davidsen (davidsen@prodigy.com)
Date: Thu Aug 30 2001 - 14:19:53 CDT
curt@kcwc.com (Curt Welch) wrote:
> The big issue I have for _my_ server is that I don't give
> remote users the power to edit my group file. That's just
> the way I do things.
Then I misunderstood you... I thought you said you create any group for
which you get traffic, allowing any bozo who can't type, misremembers a
group name, or just wishes there were such a group to add entries to
your groups file. If adding garbage to your list isn't editing the file
then we see that differently.
> Exactly. I stop it where it should be stopped, at the point
> of injection. If all the other servers on Usenet were as
> good as mine in that regard, spelling errors in the
> Newsgroups line wouldn't be the problem that it is today.
So as long as there is one server on usenet which doesn't do that check
you will create the group, then allow readers to subscribe, then allow
them to post to the finger check group?
> But the autocreate isn't the source if the problem as long
> as you don't autocreate on post. And I don't. I autocreate
> on transit or on newgroup messages.
Site which carry every group ARE the problem, because their users can
and do post to the groups.
> Personlly, moderated groups is somthing else on my list
> of things that no longer belong on Usenet.
Sites like your are what no longer belongs one Usenet... every effort
given to reducing the thought and time required without any sense of
what problems your actions cause on well-run sites.
> I haven't watched a lot of these happen, but in general, I
> think the real problem is two fold. First, there's the problem
> that not all servers create the new group. If a user on
> that server only sees the old group, and not the new one,
> then of course he's going to post to the wrong place. My
> autocreate logic would solve that problem if it became the
> "norm" on Usenet. If newgroup isn't working for a server now,
> mvgroup isn't likley to fix the problem in the future.
>
> Second, when a group rename doesn't work well, I suspect it's
> because there wasn't a clear concensious that it should happen.
> if that's the case, then the rename is never going to work
> well. Some people will continue to use the old group (or
> encourage their users to use the old group) just out of protest.
And there never will be, because some sites don't give a shit. They keep
everything so they can say they have more groups than other sites.
> Usenet is not an edited publication. Why do we feel such a
> strong need to set up commities to edit and control the
> newsgroup names when we don't do the same for the content?
Because most people are sick to death of having to read many groups to
keep up with a topic. Because most sysadmins have a a little social
responsibility, and they don't want to manage hundreds of thousand of
groups which few people will read because they are reading groups with
similar names which also only a few people read. The value of good names
is that the names should be an index to content so people can find what
they want to read.
> But in todays world where search engine technology exists
> that is able to cross index every word in every page on the
> entire web (or at least huge portions of it), why can't we
> build news servers that can do the same for just the
> newsgroups line? And then we can drop most the control
> messages, and the commites which try to control them, and
> simply let the users post wherever they want.
And let usenet die because no one can find anything useful any more.
There is no search engine which will handle every word of 2-3TB/wk in
any practical financial way. I worked with a company which managed to
spend about two million bucks finding out that they eaither got way more
matches than were useful (false positives) or took way more CPU than
anyone could afford to run an AI which will reduce the hit list to
something reasonably like a useful list. A cluster the size of the "Deep
Blue" chess engine did a fair job of big eight only, and the price you
would have to charge users would be totally impractical.
> But these problems have solutions. If you design the
> servers from the ground up to deal with large numbers of
> groups, then it's very doable. And you can create a LIST
> ACTIVE command which allows the user to list groups based
> on the amount of traffic (like show me only the top 1000
> groups or only groups with more than X number of messages
> in them etc).
The worst of all possible worlds, no one would see anything but porn and
ranting.
> My point with all this is that mvgroup is an attempt to make
> group administration work better when the real problem here
> is that we shouldn't be trying to adminster the groups in
> the first place. And if you are going to try and change
> Usenet, then I think the correct direction to head in is
> one of less group administration, and not more.
The problem is that we need to eliminate those sites which don't make
any effort to be responsible. There were at least two efforts to do
that, but I haven't heard anything about them in several years, so I
guess they died, or went stealth to keep uncontrolled site out.
-- bill davidsen (davidsen@prodigy.com) Prodigy Internet Server Group Project Leader, USENET news 914-448-1241