Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!looking!brad From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: How to eliminate the cost of over 1/5 (or more) of net traffic Message-ID: <1631@looking.UUCP> Date: 11 May 88 06:01:56 GMT References: <1616@looking.UUCP> <719@fig.bbn.com> Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Lines: 24 > >The important thing to remember is that almost nothing that appears on >Usenet is urgent, time-critical stuff. Well, not in the sense of "Delivery by 10:30 am or you don't pay," it isn't, but most of what takes place on usenet is discussion, which is improved by short propagation times. Of course, when I say "improved," I mean "is easier." Long delays would help stop flame wars and reduce volume, and that would be good in many groups, but I don't think that's the goal right now. No so with maps, sources and binaries. If a binary is 4 days late, nothing really gets interfered with. For other groups, as I have noted, the delay is a two edged sword. Many people bitch about moderators, mostly because of the delay they cause, but at the same time, the delay is one of the stronger cooling factors a moderator brings to things, even if he/she doesn't censor. I often delay stuff several weeks, but then again my group is mostly not time critical in the discussion sense. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473