Thread View: news.admin.policy
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Started by Michael Hui
Wed, 05 Jan 1994 01:53
Availability of Usenet and Gopher: stats sought
Author: Michael Hui
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 1994 01:53
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 1994 01:53
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I would like to know the ratio of people who have access to Usenet news
vs. those who have access to interactive Internet services.
Our local Freenet is insisting on putting regular news postings
generated by government ministries on newsgroups internal to the
Freenet, and at most is willing to consider making them available on
Gopher. They adamantly refuse to post the regular releases to a
suitable or newly created newsgroup, without giving any reasons
whatsoever.
Our publicly funded broadcaster, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.),
posts weekly program listings for their TV and radio channels to
newsgroups accessible by logging on to the Freenet only. These
newsgroups do not propagate outside the Freenet. Statistics Canada
posts very interesting and concise summaries of the reports they have
just published on a regular basis to the internal newsgroups. No doubt,
more Canadians will benefit by being able to read these, and using
Usenet to distribute these regular reports should make it reach far
more people than restricting them to this one Freenet and to those who
have access to Gopher. Furthermore, using Usenet news is more
convenient, since any updates automatically show up, while using Gopher
requires you to regularly check for anything new.
The Freenet offers a full feed Usenet news reading and posting service
to its members, so it's certainly not because they are against Usenet in
any way whatsoever. This even includes the alt hierarchy, except
for a few picture-carrying newsgroups.
My best argument against their policy is to demonstrate that Usenet
reaches far more people than Gopher ever can in the next decade.
Their goal should be information dissemination, not information control.
I would welcome tips on where to find such quantitative information.
Thank you.
--
Michael M.Y. Hui Ottawa Ontario Canada ~{������~}
work: myhui@bnr.ca play: myhui@bigbunny.isis.org
Re: Availability of Usenet and Gopher: stats sought
Author: Andrew Patrick
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 1994 16:01
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 1994 16:01
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In article <2gd6is$cm0@bmerha64.bnr.ca> myhui@bnr.ca (Michael Hui) writes:
>I would like to know the ratio of people who have access to Usenet news
>vs. those who have access to interactive Internet services.
>
>Our local Freenet is insisting on putting regular news postings
>generated by government ministries on newsgroups internal to the
>Freenet, and at most is willing to consider making them available on
>Gopher. They adamantly refuse to post the regular releases to a
>suitable or newly created newsgroup, without giving any reasons
>whatsoever.
Michael;
Please do not misrepresent the discussion between you and me. First,
what I have said, and what you have misrepresented here, is my opinion,
and not an official position of the National Capital FreeNet. Official
positions can only be set by the Board of Directors.
Second, in now way did I say that we should refuse to distribute any
information over regular or special Usenet groups. What I did say is
that I do not believe it is in the NCF's best interest to distribute
the local ncf.* news heiarchary outside of the NCF system. If any
information provider wants to post their information to regular Usenet
newsgroups (instead or in addition to the ncf.* groups they are using
now) through the NCF, they are free to do so and we will help them.
The issue is really what the information providers want to do, not what
the NCF will allow.
As I told you before, I do think the government information should be
distributed wider than the FreeNets, but it is the government
information providers and not the FreeNet that you have to convince.
So far, they are still learning about our wonderful technologies and
the FreeNets are a good place to get started. We need someone to
explain to them about cross-posting and the advantages of expanding
beyond the ncf.* groups.
--
Andrew Patrick, Ph.D. andrew@calvin.dgbt.doc.CA
Listen to CBC Radio on the Internet!
WWW (Mosaic)/Gopher/FTP: debra.dgbt.doc.ca
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