LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@topology.org>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2001 15:47:53 +0930

private Usenet news groups

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how to set up
a private Usenet-news style newsgroup system?

What I was thinking of was something which uses all of the
Usenet-news style of software and protocols, but which would
not be broadcast onto _the_ international Usenet news system.

I have often thought about the usefulness of a local
Usent system. In fact, I'm sure I've seen it in action
at a previous workplace of mine.

A useful application of this could be to linuxSA, although
I wonder if people with non-unix systems would be able
to access it easily. (I have seen facilities for this in
Netscape though.)

An advantage of the news-style distribution would be
that you could have multiple newsgroups, and you can pick
and choose which groups you read each day, without
losing old posts if you want to go back to them,
and most important of all ---- if someone posts to
more than one group, then you only get to read it once,
because the system only sends one copy of each post,
no matter how many groups it is linked to.
That would solve many linuxSA "split the group" problems.

The problem with using e-mail for multiple linuxSA groups is
that cross-posting results in everyone getting multiple copies
of cross-posted mails.

Another advantage of the news-style system would be reduction
of bandwidth for dial-up users, assuming that such users
would normally just automatically download all linuxSA
mails every time they dial up. SOme people do, some don't, I gather.

I realise that there must be a zillion manuals out there for
the Usenet news system, and I have set up such systems
myself in the late 1980s, but I don't want to spend time on it
if it's not going to be a good idea.
So in this e-mail, I'm just asking if the news-style system
is practical for general cross-"platform" use for the ordinary
possibly non-unix user. If it's not generally applicable, then
I'll spend my time on other things.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

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