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