🚀 go-pugleaf

rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
> B2.11 and Cnews both support the a site named "ME" in the sys file as the
> localhost, defining what groups the site accepts.  Is it really needed?
> Doesn't the active file tell you what newsgroups you receive?  I suppose
> it could be used for checking distributions, right?  How important is it,
> really?

It's very important for sites that don't receive a full feed.  Let's
say that I am one of those sites (since I am).  I want to be able to
crosspost messages to newsgroups that I don't receive, mostly so I
don't get invalid newsgroup errors when I followup to a crossposted
article.  This means that I have to have an active file with most, if
not all, of the groups in mainstream Usenet.

However, if I have all these groups in my active file, articles that
come in crossposted between groups I receive and groups I don't will
be saved locally in all the groups, not just the ones I receive.  Even
though the article is linked between the groups instead of copied,
thus conserving disk space, it creates the appearance to the user that
this machine is fed groups that we don't get.  This isn't a *large*
problem, but it can confuse the user to no end, because they see only
a part of the group.

I don't really think that a ME: line is very difficult to keep in the
code, and it does make life easier for some sysadmins.  Why bother to
take it out?

--
Marc Unangst               |
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us  | "Bus error: passengers dumped"
...!umich!leebai!mudos!mju |