From: dsmith@mailhost.aa.cad.slb.com (J. Daniel Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.config
Subject: Re: alt.colleges proposal
Date: 11 Sep 92 17:13:32 GMT
Organization: Schlumberger CAD/CAM; Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA)

In article <1992Sep9.173422.17715@midway.uchicago.edu> elle@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>In article <dsmith.716004461@aa.cad.slb.com> dsmith@aa.cad.slb.com 
> (J. Daniel Smith) thinks that:
>>it would be fun, interesting and useful to have newsgroups devoted to
>>individual colleges and universities throughout the world. 
>It would not be "fun, interesting, and useful" to waste bandwidth on
Other than that there probably wouldn't be a large amount of traffic
in any of these newsgroups (perhaps a maximum of 5-10 messages/day).
And there is already a lot of bandwidth "wasted" on things that I
think are much less useful.

>>This idea surfaced again a few weeks ago when I was looking for a 1992
>>Michigan State Football schedule.
>mentions mi.misc, which is a Michigan-miscellaneous newsgroup, and seems
>like the perfect place to ask your question.
True enough.  However regional newsgroups have a few problems:
   * most people don't read them
   * many sites in a region don't even get the regional newsgroups.
Let me explain the second point a bit with two specific examples:  a
few months ago I posted a "sendsys" to the "mi.misc".  There were
several sites that simply did not propogate the "mi" groups onto their
Michigan neighbors.  

My guess is that there are also several sites like mine that are
connected via an internal company network.  While we are located in
Michigan, our primary network connection is through Austin, TX; thus
we get our newsfeed from them.  Up until recently, we couldn't even
get a newsfeed from anywhere else, since we couldn't talk IP to the
outside world.  So while we're located in Michigan, it is quite
difficult for us to get the "mi" newsgroups.  Thus, posting to a
regional newsgroup may not be an option.

>>However, it was necessary to bother all of r.s.f.c for a MSU
>>football schedule; seems like too broad of an audience.
>These will explain the feature known as "Distribution:".
It seems that everybody has a slightly different idea about how
distributions should work; the net result is that they don't work very
well.  The "sendsys" message I mentioned above was sent out with a
"mi" distribution, yet I was getting responses from all over the
country, a clear indication that someone was leaking the "mi"
distribution.

When I send EMAIL to a few of the offending sites, I got a responses
like
   * we want to carry *everything*
   * we pass everything on to our neighbors, its up to them to
     restrict leaks.
   * we pass on "mi" since there are people outside of Michigan
     interested in Michigan stuff.

Its my understanding and opinion that a "mi" distribution should
remain completely inside Michigan and a "msu" distribution shouldn't
leave Michigan State.  If desired, the "mi" or "msu" newsgroups can be
propogated out to all of USENET; but this doesn't really do a lot of
good since most articles posted to "mi" get a "mi" distribution by
default (at least that's what Pnews does).  Its been my experience
that many news administrators don't know the difference between a
heirarchy like "mi" and the "mi" distribution; I think this is due in
part to the fact that Bnews doesn't have distributions.

>>Thus, the idea of having a newsgroup devoted to individual colleges
>>and universities.
>The University of Chicago currently has twenty-four.  They're local.
>[...]
>traffic for every campus in the world:  how about you?
Nope, I don't want to carry traffic for every campus in the world
either.  That is not the intent of "alt.colleges" newsgroup.  My
feeling is that local newsgroups have postings that fall into one of
two categories:
   * how do I do xyz on machine abc
   * how 'bout those Spartans!
The first type of posting is clearly local and should remain so.  The
second type probably appeals to a wider audience than the local
campus; rather than being posted to "msu.sports", it might instead be
posted to "alt.colleges.us.mi.msu".

My guess is that a few of the local newsgroups could even be removed
and replaced with the alt.colleges newsgroup.  "msu.general" and
"msu.sport" could be replaced with "alt.colleges.us.mi.msu"; articles
could still be posted to this newsgroup with a "msu" distribution in
an attempt to keep things local.  However, local newsgroups such as
"msu.unix" would remain local and not be propogated to the net, since
the articles there are probably of interest only to local people.

   Dan
-- 
============================================================================
J. Daniel Smith                     Internet: dsmith@aa.cad.slb.com
Schlumberger CAD/CAM                          dsmith@aaaca1.sinet.slb.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA)               UUCP: uunet!sharkey!applga!dsmith
Newsgroups: alt.config