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From: chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Expiration dates on OtherRealms
Message-ID: <24226@sun.uucp>
Date: Mon, 27-Jul-87 12:46:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.24226
Posted: Mon Jul 27 12:46:12 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 28-Jul-87 07:28:56 EDT
References: <2525@hoptoad.uucp>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: chuq@sun.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Organization: Fictional Reality, uLtd
Lines: 82

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

And I'll re-rebut. Glad I was warned this was going public...

>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.

The question is, John, how often you get requests for copies of your
articles?  Before I upped the Expiration date, I was averaging four or five
requests a week (just to UUCP -- I'm ignoring the ARPA and non-phone-bill
sites here).  That's 100K per copy, or about 2 megabytes a month flowing 
out to handle speciail requests.

Since I implemented the Expires, I've had two requests, over two months and
two issues.  A significant drop in mail volume, which I think justifies
the Expires.  The disk is cheap, and any sysadmin dying for disk space can
override it as they wish.

>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?

Not odd at all.  I can't time the release of OtherRealms to the surveys, 
because the surveys happen whenever a given site feels like doing them --
and it also depends on the vagaries of transmission delays, holding times,
etc. such that there is no way for something that is distributed to the net
can hit the survey reliably.  I could possibly ignore it, but the size and
demographics of OtherRealms happens to be of strong interest to me.

>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?

You misunderstand completely -- it isn't the folks who are there when it
comes out, it is the folks who come on-line in between issues that I'm
trying to serve.  They get told about OtherRealms by a co-worked, the group
is empty, so the write and ask me for it.  By giving it a long expiration,
the new users can get it on the local system without having to have it
mailed to them.

As I said in my mail to you, on a site without a lot of users being added,
the Expires won't really help.  But on the other sites, it HAS helped,
because OtherRealms is there when a new user goes looking for it, so I don't
have to mail a fresh copy out (saving modem costs along the way...)

>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.

Not possible, because of what OtherRealms is.  That may be a better solution
to you, but you don't seem to understand the philosophy behind OtherRealms.

>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.

>While burning disk space all over the world is a "solution" to Chuq's
>problems, it bothers me.

I don't seen any reason in what John says to remove the Expires. disk is
cheap, and by using it I've significantly cut the special mailings I've had
to make, significantly cutting the overall cost of OtherRealms on the net. I
consider this a Good Thing.  Any system administrator that disagrees with me
is free to override me on their local system, which is perfectly fine with
me as well.  But I don't see anything in Johns arguments that convince me
that what I'm doing is wrong from a new-wide point of view. If anyone wants
to try to convince me otherwise, they're welcome to.

If the size, distribution, etc of OtherRealms has gotten to the point where
it is really a hassle to the net, then perhaps it is time to move
OtherRealms off of USENET and make it strictly a printed publication. I 
consider the electronic version of OtherRealms to be a service I give to the
net.  If that service is really a problem in disguise, then perhaps it is
time to re-think whether it really belongs here anymore.

chuq (editor, otherrealms)
Chuq Von Rospach	chuq@sun.COM		Delphi: CHUQ

We live and learn, but not the wiser grow -- John Pomfret (1667-1703)