[Milsurplus] SAC Radio CDommunications

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

Peter,

That would be an excellent idea.  The only real practical problem I see is 
that not all of the specific equipment or topic lists are on the same server 
system.  Don't know how that problem would be solved.  Probably can't.  

Because of the list fragmentation, I and many others tend to post to those 
lists that the topic is applicable to (cross-posting).  Although there is 
considerable membership overlap between the various lists, it is certainly not 100%, 
due in part to some of the reasons for the fragmentation (mostly personality 
conflict).  But the downside of doing this is that everyone receives one copy 
of the post for every list they are subscribed to.

Speaking only of a single system (Al's for example), since the server 
maintains the subscriber lists it would seem relatively simple to program the server 
to send only one copy of the message to any given subscriber.  This would 
reduce traffic and server load.  And reduce in-box traffic for each user.  Would 
only work with direct cross-posts, though.  The exact same message posted 
individually to two or more lists (indirect cross-posting) would be much more 
complicated to trap.  Probably too complicated.  

The only other problem I can think of is that the various lists have been set 
up to give three (at least) different responses to the Reply and the Reply 
All functions.  So that issue would have to be resolved..  

Finally the archives of the various lists if left with their current 
organization wouldn't be affected (same message is stored multiple times whether it 
was originally cross-posted or individually posted).  But if the archives were 
somehow cross-connected (relational database concept) would result in some 
storage space savings.


In a message dated 5/28/2005 11:08:02 AM Central Daylight Time, 
nerd at verizon.net writes: 
> Perhaps the Usenet and reader system needs refinement.  For example, there 
> could 
> be the milsurplus group and it would have subgroups such as coldwarcomm, 
> fieldradios, etc. and people could watch the entire group or filter 
> (drill-down 
> selection, like software options) for what they are specifically interested 
> in. 
>   Of course, we could do that ourselves as in [milsurplus][coldwarcomm] and 
> set 
> our readers to filter but I'm afraid only the computer geeks amongst us 
> could 
> handle that setup.  Perhaps I should file a patent on an XML implementation 
> of 
> Usenet.

Robert Downs - Houston
<http://www.wa5cab.com> (Web Store)
MVPA 9480
<wa5cab at cs.com> (Primary email)
<wa5cab at houston.rr.com> (Backup email)