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From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Suggestion: article number 0
Message-ID: <2898@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Jun-85 00:21:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: nsc.2898
Posted: Mon Jun 24 00:21:35 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Jun-85 02:55:47 EDT
References: <905@sdcsla.UUCP>
Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: Plaidhenge
Lines: 56

In article <905@sdcsla.UUCP> west@sdcsla.UUCP (Larry West) writes:
>How about having an article number zero (or one) in each newsgroup,
>which always exists, and serves as an introduction to that group?
>It could include a description, name of moderator, etc.

Actually, this already exists for some groups, because when they were
created the creator sent out a note with an Expires: line in it well into
the future. We could probably collect a set of charters for distribution
with future news releases and write a shell script to install them without
much problem. The hooks, for once, are already in there!

>And "rn"
>and whatever else people use to read news would have to know to
>always show that message when someone read the group for the first
>time (this might not take any change), or when it changed (this probably
>would take a change).

All you would really need to do is send out cancel messages on the old one
and send out a new one with a long expiration date to make the switch.
Shouldn't require a lot of hassle to the code, thank GLOS.

>Comments?   Particularly from those overworked people who actually
>implement the net?

There are a few caveats I ought to mention before we all go out and
celebrate:

o Notes is an unknown. It may not acknowledge Expires: lines, and get rid
of the article anyway. Since notes are a significant subset of the net,
this wouldn't help a significant subset of the net.

o Old news (A news, for instance) doesn't understand the Expires: line,
either. See above note.

o If you set the -i or -I flag of expire, the Expires: line is ignored and
the article goes bye-bye. This is used by some sites on a regular basis, by
others when disk space is really tight. The charters go away when this
happens.

o Some systems use find to get rid of old articles, because the expire
program used to be REAL flakey. 'find -ctime +30' does an even better job
than 'expire -I' because you don't even need them to be in history file to
get them.

Overall, though, sounds like it might be a good idea. It can be implemented
in place, so we don't need people to upgrade software for it to work, and
it'll probably work for some period of time on most sites. Perhaps we want
to post them on a regular basis, say every six months or so...


-- 
:From the misfiring synapses of:                  Chuq Von Rospach
{cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui   nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA

The offices were very nice, and the clients were only raping the land, and
then, of course, there was the money...