Newsgroups: news.admin
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: A Thought Experiment about News.Groups
Message-ID: <1989May29.232541.25574@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <371@odi.ODI.COM>
Date: Mon, 29 May 89 23:25:41 GMT

In article <371@odi.ODI.COM> Benson Margulies <benson@odi.com> writes:
>Let's imagine a different technical base for the news. Assume, if you
>will, that newsgroups were merely automated mailing lists, as on
>BITNET. Each one would have a sponsor, who would provide the
>computational resource for redistributing the mail...

Who in his right mind is going to volunteer for that?  Usenet is too
big.  Bitnet is back in the dark ages; even the Internet is starting to
use Usenet's technology (in modified forms, e.g. NNTP) for distributing
news.  Decentralized distribution is an enormous win for material that
is read by many people.  Quite apart from not placing enormous loads on
a single distribution point, it also decentralizes administration.  One
of the biggest pains of maintaining a mailing list is the constant flow
of administrative duties, and the steady stream of "mail bounced, but I'm
not going to tell you why" messages from idiot-savant mailers.
-- 
Van Allen, adj: pertaining to  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
deadly hazards to spaceflight. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
