🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JAAPJL.92Sep29110702@cmb00.larc.nasa.gov> J Lee Jaap <J.L.Jaap@larc.nasa.gov> writes:
>In article <1992Sep26.134636.3137@julian.uwo.ca> jamie@csd.uwo.ca (J. Blustein) writes:

>   What is wrong with using news.announce.important?  It seems
>   to me this capability will be open to much abuse.

>n.a.i with Distribution: local should provide the same functionality,
>except for the fact that the motd would be non-optional whereas any
>group is optional for the reader.

n.a.i ain't a good idea.  If it ever leaks (and it probably would eventually),
Mark would get really PO-ed.  It's not a good idea to subvert moderated groups
for local use.  Unmoderated groups ain't so bad, but still.  They'll still
leak.  Especially if you have more than one machine.

A better solution is to create a local group for the purpose.  Like
"<your organization>.announce.important".  And only moderate it if
it gets abused - and create a "<your organization>.announce" too.

This is assuming that your site is big enough to warrant making a new
heirarchy.  Common practise is to use "general" for this in smaller
organizations.

Adding a specific out-of-band "motd" mechanism in news is sorta silly.
There's lots of other ways.  An ordinary newsgroup is more flexible.
/etc/motd is often even more effective.

On the other hand, rn and trn already *have* an out-of-band "announce"
mechanism...
-- 
Chris Lewis; clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca; Phone: Canada 613 832-0541
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