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From: heiby@mcdchg.UUCP (Ron Heiby)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.misc,news.groups,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: The Requested Presentation of Quota Based News Control
Message-ID: <1099@mcdchg.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-Jul-87 19:33:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: mcdchg.1099
Posted: Tue Jul 14 19:33:46 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 06:21:36 EDT
References: <272@brandx.rutgers.edu> <153@tmsoft.UUCP> <285@klinzhai.rutgers.edu>
Reply-To: heiby@mcdchg.UUCP (Ron Heiby)
Organization: Motorola Microcomputer, Schaumburg, IL
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Xref: mnetor news.admin:706 news.misc:770 news.groups:1246 news.sysadmin:309

It seems that with each passing article, Webber makes another inch of
progress on the long hard trek to understanding.  This one even seems
to make some sense, if we understand the premises behind it, which we
are lately beginning to.

Webber (webber@klinzhai.rutgers.edu) writes:
> I view the entire net flow as one continuous stream of messages.
Yes, it can be looked at in this way.  Unfortunately for the quota scheme,
the stream is not a homogeneous flow.  There are fish in the stream that
we want to be able to catch, while skimming off the flotsam.  Also, the
news doesn't really flow, it must be *pumped*.  Pumping takes energy (money).

> So far,
> nearly every aspect of the message has been used as a basis for determining
> whether or not that message will be passed on or taken except for
> whether or not there is room for it.
This is not so.  Several months before certain newsgroups were renamed into
the "talk" hierarchy, I took some action on my own.  I decided that my
machine did not have the disk or phone capacity to carry the articles in
those groups.  (Yes, I know that this isn't exactly what you mean.  I, with
the users of my system, had decided that we didn't want to work at pumping
the trash.)  Webber's plan seems to require sites to stop skimming the trash
and work at pumping it.  He seems to believe that we would be happier if we
went ahead and pumped some trash, but also pumped less in total.  This is
his major fallacy.  Most sites would rather pump less in total BY NOT PUMPING
THE TRASH.

> Clearly if there is no room for something where it is and no place to put
> it, it is not going to last long.
So, if there is some non-trash "upstream" that hasn't got here yet, it may
"evaporate".  Funny how the poster of the article doesn't have any idea of
how many sites actually receive the article.  Too bad.  But, as we soon read,
this is no great loss.

> Currently those people who are choosing to receive only a subset of the net 
> are doing so based on group name.  This means that site administrators must
> take responsibility for decisions such as whether or not it is a proper
> utilization of their resources to carry a group whose discussion topic is
> a computer that they don't and never plan to own or a hobby such a 
> birdwatching, or job offerings from competitors, or the pros and cons of
> abortion, or the philosophical aspects of the sciences.
It is the job of the site administrator to do exactly that.  This is the second
major fallacy that Webber maintains.

At this point, Webber lists several types of article and describes why he
does not believe that letting them get 'dropped on the floor' is a bad thing.
These include:
> A request for information
> Answer to the request for information
> Blanket postings of information
> Part n of m
  and Large source code
I guess this means that most of comp, sci, and news can be lost with no
problem, leaving us with rec, soc, and talk.  This is not the network that
my management and I are interested in supporting.  I justify my whole
involvement based on exchanging information with others and getting "free"
software.  I *cannot* justify the expenditure by saying that, "It is a fun
way to B.S. cross-country with my buddies."  I am confident that there are
people on the net who spend 98% of their time in the rec, soc, and talk
groups and can find some way of justifying that time.

> Rather than writing monolithic programs that do only one thing, it would
> make more sense to post to the net small general purpose utilities that
> other people could read and use within their own code.
We are now exposed to the Webber approach to software design.  Maybe he'd
be willing to pay people to write their donated code in such a way that he
would find more useful.  Good grief!

Now, since (according to Webber) we don't really know who, if anyone, is
going to get our article and care anything about it.  And, since when we
send mail, we do know:
> Thus, I do not see any problem being generated from the use of quotas
> to manage net news due to occasional loss of messages.  Indeed, I
> see it as actually encouraging a more responsible usage of the media
> in conjunction with making joining news less of a problem for individual
> site managers.  Neither do I see quotas as causing any implementation
> problems.  I await enlightenment.
Some of what Webber says in support of his statements does make some sense.
There *are* an awful lot of postings for information that could be got more
cheaply elsewhere.  There *are* and awful lot of "followups" that should have
been "replies".  The proposed "quota" system is not the answer, because it
is not a selective filter.  As I said above, I want to reduce the pumping by
not pumping trash, as opposed to turning off the pumps after X hours of use.

> I have been
> addressing this issue off and on since February and over that time
> my understanding of the problems of implementing a quota based system
> system within the structure of Usenet has grown.
Absolutely!  I expect you to have sufficient understanding by this Fall
at your current rate of improvement.  Keep up the good work!  :-)

Webber's statements about propagating the "logjam" of quota back to the
originating site just means that people who tend to answer more or post
more information than they request experience the majority of the logjam.
Also, since not everyone is going to implement this scheme (There are still
some 2.9 sites, right?), the logjam isn't going to propagate all the way up,
but is going to "pool" at those sites not running WEBBERnews, where it will
finally expire waiting for the logjams downstream to clear up.

Webber asks for specific problems with his proposals.  I believe that I
(and others) have given them.  If I have misunderstood his remarks or have
not been clear myself, I'd appreciate receiving clarifications or requests
for clarifications so that our understanding can increase.

I apologize for the slightly disparaging remark above and for pushing
the water analogy beyond the limits of good taste.
-- 
Ron Heiby, heiby@mcdchg.UUCP	Moderator: comp.newprod & comp.unix
"Small though it is, the human brain can be quite effective when used properly"