Subj : Announcement
To   : Kay Shapero
From : Michael Grant
Date : Sun Apr 15 2001 04:55 am

Hello Kay.

14 Apr 01 10:00, you wrote to me:

 MG>> Why the big push to remove echos? I never understood that. In
 MG>> this day and age, it certainly doesn't take up too much disk space
 MG>> to keep them in.

 KS> The more dead echoes on the list of echoes, the harder it is for a
 KS> sysop to identify the live ones and the more it looks like the whole
 KS> system is dead.

It's not like the users are exactly beating a path to the BBSes these days 
anyhow... and I note that of those BBSes who are most popular via telnet 
connection, almost all of them have the /entire/ backbone in the BBS, 
regardless of traffic levels.

Choice is also something that users look for.

 KS>  Estimated traffic levels don't tend to get updated on
 KS> the echolist (yes I'm as guilty as anybody there).  Now the
 KS> discussion indicates that someone must know what actual traffic there
 KS> is in the various echoes, or it would be impossible to use that data
 KS> to remove some.  So why not simply start adding that indicator to the
 KS> list of backbone echoes each time it's issued?

Problem is that many utilities that auto-import echos rely on a specific *.NA 
format to do the task. Tag name first, description following. Many of these 
utilities import the description as well. Adding traffic stats to the *.NA file 
would throw a monkey wrench into the works. Mind you, I wouldn't mind a stats 
chart being added to the BACKBONE file echo. and distributed at the same time 
as the BACKBONE.NA and BACKSTAT.NA.

At present, Ross Cassell, Jerry Gause and others regularly post echo traffic 
stats in the STATS echo, and other Regional and/or Net admin echos. My uplink 
posts the same in a special echo distributed to his downlinks, and Foxy 
Ferguson regularly posts which echos were dropped/added in the STATS echo as 
well. All a sysop needs to do is link to those echos and browse through them 
once in a while, and it can be easily seen which echos should be taken out.


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 * Origin: MikE'S MaDHousE: WelComE To ThE AsYluM! (1:134/11)

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