Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site watmath.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!bstempleton From: bstempleton@watmath.UUCP (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: net.news Subject: Re: Top News Submitters by Person Message-ID: <5473@watmath.UUCP> Date: Sun, 3-Jul-83 03:35:34 EDT Article-I.D.: watmath.5473 Posted: Sun Jul 3 03:35:34 1983 Date-Received: Sun, 3-Jul-83 04:43:11 EDT References: <736@rlgvax.UUCP> Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 51 Well, thanks for submitting this info. It shows something which will become even more and more of a problem when the net grows. Here we have a new site (mit-eddi) which was by an order of magnitude the biggest poster on the net, and which contained the user who posted the most as well, again by a substantial margin. If everybody had as much to say as these guys, the net would very quickly collapse of its own weight. We need something more to help educate new users as to the size of the net and the net etiquette rules that have developed. This means that news software has got to insist that people know this, and be quite verbose in warnings etc. on posting. (This is justified, since one posting can equal at least several thousand readings) The problem is that there are always old sites out there running old stuff and we can't effect such changes. Thus I suggest we adopt in the news software a system to help encourage people to update. This would consist of code that checks the system clock against the expiry date. If the code has expired, it either fails to work or prints out "This code has expired. Please install an update etc..." every time it is used. Now we can't hide this code, so a nasty system administrator could delete it, but this itself would be a reminder that the code is out of date. We could go even further. What we have is essentially an anarchy on the net, and the only way to get things done is by technocratic methods. We could actually go so far as to have news systems send special header items similar to passwords, encripted with the posting date so the password can't be figured out. Once a password expires, it and the new password would be accepted for a given number of weeks (perhaps 4) and after that no incoming articles with a bad password would be accepted. Thus any site that doesn't update will still pass on news but will not get any of their generated news accepted on the net. This does sound rather harsh, and it's certainly quite far from the track of any software policy I have heard of, but I would like to get comments on this philosophy. I realize many sites don't have the time to keep track of updates. This scheme means that sites that have the time to post news must also have the time to post it correctly. None of this apples to readnews, though. Mostly it applies to inews because it by posting only that we are members of a community which will soon need laws. -- Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ont. (519) 886-7304