🚀 go-pugleaf

emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes:
>In article <632@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com writes:
>   There are hundreds of people who announce materials available for anonymous FTP. 
>   If there were an easy-to-use standard form for them to fill out on-line, I'm 
>   sure sure it could be popularized quite quickly. 
>I think that such a form would be quite useful... 
>[but] Existing projects which rely on self-cataloging and self-description have 
>miserable hit rates... people were supposed to send in descriptions of their 
>stuff, and fill out a complicated database format.  They didn't.

Biology journals are having success requiring researchers to fill out
a standard online form describing the genetic sequences to appear in their papers.

We could do likewise; the moderators of sources newsgroups (or of big FTP
archives) could all get together and agree that, before any submission would be 
considered, a standard form must be filled out.

Every published package ought to have a unique identifier, too; you can't
rely on the name of the package (how many 'xplot' or 'ascii2ps' packages are
floating around out there?).  Identifiers like comp.sources.x/v8n221 would
be sufficient.
- Dan Kegel