Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!vsi1!daver!carpet!bill
From: bill@carpet.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: News.announce.newuser seems to be empty
Message-ID: <133@carpet.WLK.COM>
Date: 21 Aug 88 00:53:13 GMT
References: <20421@watmath.waterloo.edu> <1070@cfa214.cfa250.harvard.edu> <13498@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <4712@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: bill@ssbn.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy)
Distribution: na
Organization: W.L. Kennedy Jr. and Associates
Lines: 38

In article <4712@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) writes:
>In article <13498@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) writes:
>>[...] And Gene can
>>start superseding the articles.
[ Spaf's remarks about supercedes and expires ]
>
>...of course, that doesn't include the 2 month period this
>summer when I stopped posting the items and only 3 people
>noticed.  This whole debate may be moot -- the group may not
>be worth continuing.

No, I wholeheartedly disagree.  Each of the monthly "recordings" is most
useful to my site and neighbors because we are frequently acquiring new
readers.  There's a lot of it but it's worth distributing because of the
number of questions it pre-answers and the description of the net culture.

Well I'm a guilty party for not having written in to ask where they had
gone, but I noticed.  In particular I noticed when they were cross posted
to groups where they do not normally appear, but I didn't grouse about
that either.

I vote to keep the "recordings" coming even though no one asked for a vote.
I would be curious to know why the diffs are sent out when they just update
the old ones to the current versions.  Do some sites actually apply the diffs
rather than take the newer article?  If not, then it seems like they aren't
as useful as they might be.

If you're going to cut back on the new user articles, P U L E E E Z E don't
do it until our annual September rash of new readers.  If it keeps just a
few from making the annual faux pas (and ensuing RTFM wars), then they are
worth every bit of bandwidth.  The news groups description is especially
useful for setting up a news neighbor because it lets them pick and choose
for a partial feed.  If they are to be discontinued, please point us to
someplace where we can get them so that those of us who want them can have
access.
-- 
Bill Kennedy  Internet:  bill@ssbn.WLK.COM
                Usenet:  { killer | att | rutgers | uunet!bigtex }!ssbn!bill