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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Expiration dates on OtherRealms
Message-ID: <2525@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Mon, 27-Jul-87 01:43:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.2525
Posted: Mon Jul 27 01:43:40 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 28-Jul-87 01:03:22 EDT
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 110

I was checking the age of some of the news on my disk and noticed that
last month's OtherRealms (rec.mag.otherrealms) had a 1-month expiry
date, and that this month's 111K expires in November.  I think this is an
abuse of Expires: and am not interested in keeping Chuq's "magazine"
on my "coffee table" for longer than the default expiration period.
Chuq sees no reason to fix it; this is our interaction:

Date: Wed, 22 Jul 87 16:36:34 PDT
From: gnu (John Gilmore)
To: sun!plaid!chuq
Subject: Expiration dates on OtherRealms

I was checking why /usr/spool was filling up and found that I have
back copies of OtherRealms from last month (due to an expiration date
late this month) and copies from this month which will not expire
until November!

Why should OtherRealms not expire like the rest of the netnews -- by
local option, based on how much disk space they have?  Everything else
sticks around hoptoad for 9 days, but OtherRealms should be here for months?

I don't like to override expiration dates, because that blows away
things like the maps, news lists, and conference announcements that
have a legitimate reason to stick around.  But this requires that
people don't abuse 'Expires:', which is why I'm asking you to fix it
rather than just blasting all old articles no matter what their expiration
date.

The first set of OtherRealms will expire in a day or two, but I think
you should send out a cancel on the other ones, since they have been out
there for 12 days now, which is roughly the right interval.

	John


Date: Sun, 26 Jul 87 19:54:56 PDT
From: sun!chuq (Chuq Von Rospach)
To: hoptoad!gnu
Subject: Re:  Expiration dates on OtherRealms

It's done for a couple of reasons:

1) because I'm constantly getting requests for back issues (or replacement
	copies) because OtherRealms comes out much less often than the 
	default expiration, so the newsgroup is often empty.  This implies
	a lot of (needless) large e-mail files.

2) because the way Brian's demographics run, it is impossible to get a 
	reasonable number for OR's readers any other way, since it is likely
	that the issue has expired before the arbitron is read.

3) because OtherRealms is a very low volume group when you think about it,
	and can't be causing major disk problems.  On a machine with little
	readership turnover (like hoptoad) it probably isn't necessary, but
	I really need some way of keeping OtherRealms around between issues to 
	make it available, and the Expires: is the only way -- unless I want
	to republish it every few weeks, which I think is a real waste.

It doesn't take up much time (I'm surprised the previous issue hadn't 
expired -- it should have from the date I put on it). Um, make that space.
If you want to override it, be my guest -- I don't believe that it can 
really cause serious disk problems, and becuse of the ways that OR is
different from the rest of the net, it is justified.

chuq

---------

Gnu here again.  I'd like to rebut Chuq's reasons here.

1) I'd like to put a long expiration date on everything I post so that
nobody would bother me about getting copies of it, too.  In fact, let's
expire comp.sources in 1995 or so.  As you can see, if everyone played
this game there would be no disk left.  Wouldn't it be better to tell
folks to save away the issues when they arrive, if they really care enough
to email around the net looking for copies after they expire?  Sounds
like education is in order, not long expiry dates.

2) This is an odd one!  The claim is that because Brian Reid's readership
survey exists, Chuq's postings should stick around to be sure they are counted.
Why not time the release of the magazine to coincide with the surveys,
like the TV networks and such do?  Or just ignore the survey?

3) I don't understand this one.  Because OtherRealms is such a low
volume group, people don't read it when it comes out?  Can't its
readers fight their way through all 111K before it expires?  It seems
that a better solution would be to post it in pieces, say one per week,
so that there would usually be something there but the whole thing wouldn't
stick around for months.

I'd take the issue to Stupid Peoples' Court but it seems to be out
of session.  So I'll take it to the news administrators instead.
If we assume that, like mod.mag.otherrealms, rec.mag.otherrealms
reaches 90% of the now ~6800 Usenet sites, that's ~6100 sites.
The current issue is therefore tying up ~677,100,000 bytes of disk around
the world and will continue to do so until November.

While burning disk space all over the world is a "solution" to Chuq's
problems, it bothers me.  So far nobody else has refused to remove
Expires: lines or failed to cancel "never expires" type postings, once
I explained what Expires: was for, and how individual sites manage
their disk space.  (Every once in a while I read the front of my
history file to see what old articles still linger there, and email the
folks who did it, educating them about how untutored use of Expires: is
a Bad Thing.)  Chuq seems to see his group as more important than the
rules for Expires: lines.  Do the rest of the news admins agree?

-- 
{dasys1,ncoast,well,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu	     gnu@postgres.berkeley.edu
Alt.all: the alternative radio of the Usenet.