Re: Update

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

lohner@typhoon.icd.teradyne.com writes:
>>I think taking comp.os.linux.news is a bad idea - I much prefer a
>>closed news service - where people must go through some kind of web
>>interface to post articles.  This allows a more controlled interface.

Well, that in itself is not a good enough reason. The newsgroup we
picked would be moderated, so only we could post to it, and we would
post in whatever pre-controlled format we wanted. It would in effect be
a closed-post open-read news transport service, where somebody else dealt
with the mechanics of it.

>>I think we need to have something that is unquestionably ours.  Going
>>out to usenet is a bad idea, imho.
>>
>  Agreed.  This service also won't be needed on as many servers initially 
>etc., so a closed service is more controllable and better suited to what 
>we're trying to do.

This may well be the case, though.

In any case, getting a good nntp-based news sharing network together is
going to be a big task. I spoke with scoop at length this morning, and
we decided it might be wise to narrow our focus for now. If we can get a
standardized news description format agreed upon and in place, then we will
open up a lot of options. For instance, from there we will be able to set
up a universal submission site, which will allow people to submit news at
a single well-known site, and it will then deliver pre-formatted news to
relevant sites. Also, we can go after the more ambitious "sharing network"
idea that I/we've been investigating lately.
Doing this smaller step first allows us to get some experience solving
problems together, allows us to gain some credibility and public interest
(maybe we'll even hear from slashdot :), but most importantly it allows us
to actually get something accomplished.

I've heard from somebody who has written his own news server and is
interested in helping us use it. I will follow up on that, as well as
several other leads for people who think INN is the correct solution.

So one question we need to sort out is whether we want the standardized
description format to be different for different categories of news, or
one single format, with various headers optional depending on the category.
In either case, we would probably have a different form for each category,
and the real question is just how we store it. I guess this is very much
related to the syntax we're using for storing it. Chris -- which one is
easier/simpler/better?

--Roger