Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version VT1.00C 11/1/84; site vortex.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!vortex!lauren From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) Newsgroups: net.news.group Subject: magic numbers Message-ID: <745@vortex.UUCP> Date: Fri, 16-Aug-85 14:10:17 EDT Article-I.D.: vortex.745 Posted: Fri Aug 16 14:10:17 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 21:07:11 EDT Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles Lines: 56 "... 30 is the magic number for forming a new group..." Really? 30 seems like a good number for a mailing list to me. There are well over a 1000 machines on this net, with many 10's of thousands of users. And we think that we should start a new group because 30 people want it? Increasing the traffic to all sites as a result? Even worse, when you start a new group like mod.sources.pc (please, under no circumstances should there be more unmoderated source groups!) it is very tempting for everyone in the universe to simply post everything they have, even stuff that has been posted in the past or is already widely distributed. Even moderators are hard pressed to deal properly with things like that. Source groups, in particular, have a very high potential for massively increasing traffic. I can't see any good excuse for unmoderated source groups, since the value of the source certainly won't be hurt by a little moderation delay. In fact, very little of the net traffic would be hurt by moderate moderation delay. But whether moderated or not, new source groups shoudn't be created at the drop of the hat-- no groups should be. Regardless of whether groups are moderated or unmoderated, I want to once again implore people to use mailing lists whenever possible. We've been seeing the creation of many new high volume groups lately, and things are starting to gradually crack all over the place. Even low volume groups shouldn't be created when existing groups can fill the need. Remember, when new groups are created they tend to CREATE NEW TRAFFIC -- they don't just syphon off existing traffic. The existence of a new group in the group list triggers the posting of much more material--I've been watching the stats on this and know this to be true. It may be primarily a psychological effect ("gee, now that we have our own group we can feel free to post whatever we like") but the effect is real and affects virtually every site. It's time again to take a more global view of the network and the way it's growing, before we create ourselves into a traffic deadlock that will probably result in many (more) sites pulling the plug on netnews entirely. Stargate is coming along but is limited right now by equipment availability and can't even consider taking any real load for sometime yet. In the meantime, all we have is the current environment from which to choose our materials. I'd very much like to see a moratorium on the creation of any new groups until we can work out some sort of organized system for dealing with the short term growth. The alternative is plugs starting to be pulled all over the place, some by major sites, simply as a matter of self defense. The creation of all groups, moderated or unmoderated, general or specific, affect the net traffic in manners not well understood and cost amounts of money that nobody can really imagine. I think the time has come to step back, take a breath, and think a little before we try continue with "business as usual" and lead ourselves farther down the path to trouble. --Lauren--