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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!u1100a!sr
From: sr@u1100a.UUCP (Steven Radtke)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: How to save the net from overload
Message-ID: <690@u1100a.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Jun-84 10:59:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: u1100a.690
Posted: Wed Jun  6 10:59:14 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Jun-84 07:47:21 EDT
References: <626@pyuxqq.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway, NJ
Lines: 33

> The net is beginning to be swamped with the volume of messages.

Says who? Would you like to site some figures?

> I notice several people are submitting multiple long messages
> to the same group.

So what, as long as they are not identical submissions or improperly
posted!

> Something should be done to cut down the number of submissions.

If YOUR site is overload, your news administrator has options open
to him/her, such as excluding various groups.

> I have a suggestion: I wish each system administrator (SA)
> would set up their machine(s) to truncate all messages > 24 lines,
> one screen full.  If they would do this, we would soon see short,
> to the point, messages from all these people that are afflicted
> with the verbage virus.  If the SA's would also disallow more
> than 1 msg/person/group/day, I think the volume of messages being
> sent over the net would greatly decrease.  Its time some action was
> taken against those with keyboard diarrhea, before some key net site
> pulls out altogether.

Clearly, it is possible to have something important or interesting to
say that exceeds 24 lines ( who says 24 lines is a standard anyway? ).
Or one may exceed the proposed standard by including reference lines
in a followup article ( my article would be less than 24 lines without the
lines from the original article ).
Anyway, the load on machines is a function of the number of articles and the number of characters, not the number of lines, since most people terminate a line with the newline char rather than letting lines wrap indiscriminantly.
Also, it is possible to have comments on two or more different
discussions in one newsgroup on the same day.