Re: Possible reorganisation of comp.sys.apple2 hierarchy

[lwv26@cas.org (Larry W. Virden)]

In article <1993Feb9.031342.2943@freenet.carleton.ca> aa382@Freenet.carleton.ca (Marc Sira) writes:
:
:>this problem - rec.games.frp.  As rec.games.frp was split into .misc,
:>dnd, .archives, etc... the number of messages didn't go down - they
:>increased.  But not all of them were unique messages.  Indeed; I have
:>seen times when almost every message in rec.games.frp.misc was also
:>crossposted to rec.games.frp.dnd.  If, as I suspect, this actually
:>causes a message to be posted to each of these groups, then this means
:>that by splitting the group the network managers have simply doubled
:>the amount of mass storage needed in order to handle the Usenet.  I
:
:I _think_ that crossposted messages exist once, with the relevant groups
:in the header. Thus crossposting uses less bandwidth than, say, posting
:a message repeatedly, to different newsgroups (which some people do).
:
:If I'm wrong about this, someone please correct me (but I don't think I am).

Here is how the software works:

A user has a choice.  S/he can decide to post  a msg once, and list a 
series of newsgroups, or s/he can post a msg numerous times.  If S/he posts
once, and none of the groups are moderated, then (99.9999% of the time)
the msg is stored into a file (corresponding to an article of the current
group) and then a link to that file is created for each additional newsgroup 
that is created.  Each of these additional links take up about 8 bytes or
so.

Many news readers (at least nn, tin, trn, rn, xrn and a few others) make
sure that when you specifically read an article which has been cross 
referenced to other groups, the other appearances are marked as read.

Thus, most folks using current readers will be fine.

OTOH, the folks who will be negatively impacted will be proline readers,
info-apple readers, bitnet list readers and probably a few others that I
am forgetting.  As far as I last checked, there was no cross reference
processing in proline, and certainly if new groups were creatd the info-apple
folks would either get left out or some special code would have to be written
to merge msgs into the one mail distribution stream and then break them back
out for replies.

That doesn't mean that I am against a split - actually, I am all for it.
I just want folk to understand the ramifications.
-- 
Larry W. Virden                 UUCP: osu-cis!chemabs!lvirden
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