Splinter groups (was Re: comp.unix.sco...)

[Randall L. Smith]

In article <1990May1.221156.20220 at newcastle.ac.uk>, Chris.Holt at newcastle.ac.uk (Chris Holt) writes:
> What is going to happen to news groups when the load factor increases by
> 10 (<5 years, when more universities allow their students access) and
> 100 (<15 years?, when more non-computing people gain access) and
> 1000 (<25 years?, when the rest of the world starts linking in)?

This "threat" has been around for a long time and it is being handled by
subdivision and alteration of additional nets.  e.g. Vmsnet, Bitnet, Fido,
Clari? :-), as well as commercial nets.

Besides, don't you believe horsepower and transmission speeds will
increase? :-) I know, you're talking about "How will we ever read it
all?".  In a phrase, we won't.
 
Me, I'm worried about Alpha Centuari linking in.  Yow, their yakkity.

> Claim: centralized algorithms are not going to work.  A single,
> overseeing news.groups cannot cope, so each node will have to have its
> own .groups to deal with fissions.

The traffic is hardly overwhelming in comp.i386.
 
> Claim: centralized unmoderated groups are not going to work.  There

When the traffic gets there, we'll know it and splinter.  Probably by,
experience level, not variations of a theme.  The expectations of this
centralized newsgroup is that the Intel architecture Unix is merging to
the peculiar (System V / BSD) standard at all levels and will stay there.
Wherever there is...

> Question: is it worth providing a forum for discussion of what shape
> the net should take?  Clearly people have (perhaps ill-formed) images

That is what news.groups is about.  This process has taken on the form of a
quick and dirty program (apologies to Mark Horton and other pioneers) that
continually gets patched from a variety of programmers with a variety of
styles.  When will we sit back and actively design its future? Who knows?
You are welcome to be the messiah that save us from collapse. 

BTW, the comment re: quick and dirty is the net was never designed or
expected to be what is today.  Kudos to all involved since it does handle
it nicely anyway.

> Just a thought. 

Same here.  No flames intended, etc.

> "There is a holy mistaken zeal in programming as well as in religion..."

Please add, network architecture too. ;-)

Cheers!

- randy

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Disclaimer: Oh, am I gonna get flamed for this one... Right Brad?