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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watcgl.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!watcgl!dmmartindale
From: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.stargate
Subject: Re: misc. stargate items
Message-ID: <963@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-Jan-85 12:51:03 EST
Article-I.D.: watcgl.963
Posted: Mon Jan 14 12:51:03 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Jan-85 01:35:52 EST
References: <501@vortex.UUCP>
Reply-To: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 34
Xref: watmath net.news:2967 net.news.stargate:4

This is another vote in favour of some source of moderated news -
either via stargate or some other means.  While at Waterloo, I've
watched the information flow on USENET grow from under 1Mb/week to its
current level of over 4Mb/week.  I used to read almost everything that
came in (except info-cpm, remember that?), now I read only a small
fraction, and the valuable stuff is getting scarcer.

Watmath continues to receive and forward all groups (it is a backbone
site).  And it continues to feed all of this to most of the other
on-campus machines on the basis that it is easier to send everything
than to try to determine what is "worthwhile", and each machine has a
sizeable body of news readers who might be reading any given group.

But I'm about to leave Waterloo, for a new machine that will have about
3 users.  I want to get a USENET connection for it, but it will likely
be impossible to justify the phone and machine time needed to get a
complete feed, most of which would never be looked at by anyone.  Once
it is necessary to select particular groups, the only specific groups
that can be justified are the explicitly technical ones.

If stargate was up and running, it would be much easier to justify the
"accept everything" policy, both because the real costs do not increase
with the volume received, and because the quality would be sufficiently
improved that more of it would be worth reading.

Under these conditions (and I suspect they are becoming more common, as
it becomes more expensive to join USENET as a full-feed site), stargate
or something like it will allow me to read more, not less, news.  And
get more out of it at the same time.

If some of you want to spend your hours flaming at each other, fine.  But
you cannot expect me to try to justify spending money which ultimately
comes from taxpayers to pay for importing it to a site where it will
not even be read.