From: ian@unipalm.co.uk (Ian Phillipps)
Subject: Re: RFD: Should UK groups be sent to UUnet?
Organization: Unipalm Ltd., 216 Cambridge Science Park, Cambridge CB4 4WA, UK
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 10:32:34 GMT

guy@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Guy Barry) writes:

>gtoal@cursci.demon.co.uk (Graham Toal) writes:

>>Considering the last 5 postings in this thread have been from dec.com,
>>netcom.com, stanford.edu, somewhere-i-forget.ca and kodak.com, I think
>>it's rather a moot point, folks.

>Yes, but they've all been crossposted from soc.culture.british (or
>possibly news.groups).

I'm sorry, Guy, Graham has grasped the wrong end of the stick. The
current position is:

Anyone, anywhere, can post to uk groups and have a fair chance of their
getting here - especially uk.misc and uk.telecom, which are in uunet's
master list. Witness that Russian/Canadian looking for a job a few
weeks ago. Cross-posting to any world-wide group will ensure transit. I
deliberately cross-posted this thread to news.groups to ensure
world-wide propogation.

No-one feeds the "usenet mainstream", either directly or indirectly,
with the uk groups at present. By the "mainstream", I mean the sites
appearing at the top of the "inpaths"-created list - uunet is no.1,
decwrl is no.  28. Hence (to take two examples) neither Sun nor DEC
employees in the UK receive the full uk groups.

This means that the poster who started the "humor" (sic) thread may
very well not have seen any of the follow-ups. He hasn't yet replied to
my email on the subject, so I don't know. Certainly, there are many
people in the USA who see 26 uk.misc articles/month (decwrl figures) and
think that they are getting a uk feed. There are people such as Graham
who see foreign postings and imagine that newsfeeds are commutative:
they aren't. UUnet feeds Pipex with everything it has, including
uk.misc and uk.telecom; because Pipex subscribes to these groups those
postings will reach the UK mainstream. There are undoubtedly other
routes in.

Now that private individuals are on the Internet, there are
"unofficial" feeds of news, which do not for the most part propogate
widely. The path quoted in another article in this thread shows this up
Demon sent uk news to a .edu site. Graham is right in so far as yes,
the news is now "out of control".  Where news goes is determined by the
whims of pairs of news admins: this has always been the case in most of
the Usenet world. Now that private individuals have access to
essentially free international communications, this effect will be
multiplied.

I am doing the net in the UK the courtesy of asking it whether it wants
this to happen on a wider scale, before doing so.  Pipex carries all
news it can, and feeds to its customers the groups and distributions
they ask for. (Yes, this disagrees with the Pipex FAQ; yes, I really
must re-write it).  If anything, Pipex has an interest in *not*
forwarding UK groups to uunet.

I am saving all the articles in this thread, and the replies by email,
and will post the result later this week.

Ian
-- 
Ian Phillipps, Unipalm Ltd, 216 Science Park,		Phone +44 223 420002
Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 4WA, England.		Phax  +44 223 426868
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