Postresql RFD version 2.0 Help Wanted.

Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com> wrote in news:2v4mbfF2i3beoU1@uni-
berlin.de:

Since we have the discussion going, someone mentioned that the group name
should be comp.databases.postgresql. I think this is a good name and I'd
like to see what everyone thinks of it.

Much better, especially if you are only proposing a single newsgroup in the
hierarchy. Use of the word "general" is unnecessary, and cumbersome.

--
Bill

Woodchuck Bill wrote:

Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com> wrote in news:2v4mbfF2i3beoU1@uni-
berlin.de:

Since we have the discussion going, someone mentioned that the group name
should be comp.databases.postgresql. I think this is a good name and I'd
like to see what everyone thinks of it.

Much better, especially if you are only proposing a single newsgroup in
the hierarchy. Use of the word "general" is unnecessary, and cumbersome.

My original intention was to make the comp.database.postgresql.* groups
proper members of the "big 8" managed hierarchy. They are considered
"bogus" currently by many proper News providers because they haven't gone
through RFD and CFV. I wanted to start slowly and with the most benefitial
group, comp.databases.postgresql.general, and then do the others in
accordance to traffic interest as measured by google groups.

There is resistance in the mailing lists however, even though the groups are
already on usenet and are in the managed "big 8" name space without RFD
and CFV.

That is why I am now proposing to change it to comp.databases.postresql so
it doesn't clash with the mailing list name space of
comp.databases.postgresql.general. If others on the
mailing-list/usenet-gateway do want to be proper members of the big 8, then
they should speak up.

There is also the issue of moving the postgresql mailing list/news gateway
to a private namespace like postgresql.*. This would be similar to gnu.*
and microsoft.*. This would solve the problem of the postgresql groups
residing in a managed hierarchy without going through RFD and CFV, which
was the problem I was originally trying to solve.

On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 11:11:09 -0800, Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com> wrote:

Since we have the discussion going, someone mentioned that the group name
should be comp.databases.postgresql. I think this is a good name and I'd
like to see what everyone thinks of it.

I think you're pursuing this backwards, Mike. You should contact the current
owner of the present mail-to-news gateway and build some sort of consensus
with *him* on what the problem and proposed solution is, before trying to
create a solution that will only muddy the waters up even farther.

This person made a choice to use Big 8 namespace on his server (and other
servers). His server, his rules. Maybe he can be brought to the table to
discuss why that isn't the easy fix he thought it was and figure out what
the best way to go is from here.

--
Devin L. Ganger <devin@thecabal.org>
"Aikido is based around the central precept of letting an attack take
its natural course. You, of course, don't want to impede that natural
flow by being in its way." -- overheard on the PyraMOO

Polarhound wrote:

Mike Cox wrote:

There is resistance in the mailing lists however, even though the groups
are
already on usenet and are in the managed "big 8" name space without RFD
and CFV.

This now brings up the question of traffic numbers. Historically, if
people are against a NG, or are already happy with their current method
of communication, they are unlikely to switch.

That is why I am now proposing to change it to comp.databases.postresql
so it doesn't clash with the mailing list name space of
comp.databases.postgresql.general. If others on the
mailing-list/usenet-gateway do want to be proper members of the big 8,
then they should speak up.

Wasn't the original point of the whole proposal to legitimize the list
owner's stupidity in creating the comp.* groups in the first place?

Yes it was. It was to make them legitimate so I could post through my
usenet provider. I will probably let the proposal die. If I were to
create a seperate group, I've realized that then people would be split up
into the usenet and mailing list camps. That is not my original intention.
My goal was to make the group a proper member of the comp.* hierarchy so
that more people could participate through usenet.

I cannot handle the volume of email that a mailing list would place on my
inbox. I will not be able to use the mailing list, only for dire
emergencies where I will have to constantly monitor my inbox so it doesn't
overflow.

I cannot understand why they wouldn't want to be part of the comp.*
hierarchy properly though. They could still be a mail the list for those
that wanted it, just like they are doing now! The only change is that it
would allow people to post through usenet instead of just being able to get
them on non-standard usenet servers who don't follow the big 8 config file.

We can make the group moderated too if that's their concern. If Marc or
anyone wants to be a moderator, I see why not. They could probably have a
script that could allow those on the mailing list to get through faster
too.

Devin L. Ganger wrote:

On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 11:11:09 -0800, Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Since we have the discussion going, someone mentioned that the group
name
should be comp.databases.postgresql. I think this is a good name and
I'd like to see what everyone thinks of it.

I think you're pursuing this backwards, Mike. You should contact the
current owner of the present mail-to-news gateway and build some sort of
consensus with *him* on what the problem and proposed solution is, before
trying to create a solution that will only muddy the waters up even
farther.

This person made a choice to use Big 8 namespace on his server (and other
servers). His server, his rules. Maybe he can be brought to the table to
discuss why that isn't the easy fix he thought it was and figure out what
the best way to go is from here.

That is way beyond my technical scope I'm afraid. I wouldn't know what the
correct solution would be. Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, seems very
knowledgable about this, and I would be pleased if you could mail the
postgresql list person about this discussion and Russ's email address. If
the postgresql list manager and Russ decide it is a bad idea to be part of
the big 8, all the list maintainer has to do is post a message to
news.groups and I will not go any farther.

Basically if the mailing list-news-gateway doesn't want to be in the big 8
then I'm not going to continue in that process.

Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:2v5e77F2hdbblU1@uni-berlin.de:

I cannot handle the volume of email that a mailing list would place
on my
inbox.

Ever heard of a digest version?

--
Bill

Woodchuck Bill wrote:

Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:2v5e77F2hdbblU1@uni-berlin.de:

I cannot handle the volume of email that a mailing list would place
on my
inbox.

Ever heard of a digest version?

I don't care. Its too much of a hassle to dig through without being able to
google groups search it.

I'm pretty much done with this anyway. It is a waste of time putting in
anymore effort since no one seems to want it.

Here are the steps I went through.

1. I tried subscribing to comp.databases.postgresql.general through my
usenet provider thinking it was a regular big 8 group. When it wasn't
found, I sent a request to my news provider to include it.

2. My news provider emailed me back saying it was "bogus" and they would not
carry it.

3. How could it be "bogus" I thought. It is a legitimate project with
years of history. It has won numerous awards. I did a search on google
and found out that it was indeed "bogus". Simple enough I thought.
Obviously the postgresql folks are way too busy developing the features of
postgresql to have time to go through a rigerous process of RFD and CFV
which takes about a month to complete.

Given that they named their group under the big 8 namespace, it seemed
obvious to me that they wanted to be there. I'm not a programmer so I
thought I could contribute by going through the process for them. I tried
posting to the group but my mail bounced. I searched but I couldn't find
out how to make it post to the mailing list.

Well, an RFD is a Request for Discussion so what better way to get the ball
rolling on what is basically a formality because they are *already* on
usenet, just in a "bogus" way. I would go through the rigerous process and
get the group approved, with the knowlegde that the only thing that would
change is that they would be a legitimate member of the comp domain.

4. It seems that it was a much bigger issue than just completing a
formality, such as reminding someone that their domain name had expired.
The big 8 membership seemingly went over badly in private email discussions
between the list members from what I've heard from one usenet poster. If
it is an ego thing, I've already said that I would let someone take over if
that was the issue.

I've heard a postive response initially from members of the news.groups
group, saying it was a good idea to put them in since they are established,
have readership in usenet, and are well liked. Many usenet providers also
voiced their support. They have a choice of bowing to user demand and have
a bogus group in their comp hierarchy or like my provider, refusing to
carry it. Not pretty in either case.

On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 18:03:57 -0800, Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Devin L. Ganger wrote:

I think you're pursuing this backwards, Mike. You should contact the
current owner of the present mail-to-news gateway and build some sort of
consensus with *him* on what the problem and proposed solution is, before
trying to create a solution that will only muddy the waters up even
farther.

This person made a choice to use Big 8 namespace on his server (and other
servers). His server, his rules. Maybe he can be brought to the table to
discuss why that isn't the easy fix he thought it was and figure out what
the best way to go is from here.

That is way beyond my technical scope I'm afraid. I wouldn't know what the
correct solution would be.

No one ever said you have to do it *alone*. There are folks here who
would be more than willing to *help* you do it, but they're not going
to do it for you.

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, seems very knowledgable about this,
and I would be pleased if you could mail the postgresql list person
about this discussion and Russ's email address.

Russ is a busy person; don't be so quick to volunteer his time for him
unless you're damn sure you have his permission. Even if he were not a
busy person, most people consider it to be rude to be volunteered
without their consent.

Basically if the mailing list-news-gateway doesn't want to be in the big 8
then I'm not going to continue in that process.

Which is fair, but since you're the person who *did* kick this off, you
should probably be the person to email the owner and ask him if he would
be willing to have a conversation with you about the best way to proceed
from here.

You should also probably take a step back and contact the group mentor
list <group-mentors@lists.eyrie.org> and get some advice and participation
from the folks there, no matter which way you intend to pursue this.
Again, there are people who will help, but you need to be willing to run
point on this even though it's likely not going to be the slam-dunk you
thought it would be initially.

--
Devin L. Ganger <devin@thecabal.org>
"Aikido is based around the central precept of letting an attack take
its natural course. You, of course, don't want to impede that natural
flow by being in its way." -- overheard on the PyraMOO

"Devin L. Ganger" <devin@thecabal.org> wrote in
news:slrncor6a5.6ju.devin@bofh.thecabal.internal:

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, seems very knowledgable about this,
and I would be pleased if you could mail the postgresql list person
about this discussion and Russ's email address.

Russ is a busy person; don't be so quick to volunteer his time for him
unless you're damn sure you have his permission. Even if he were not a
busy person, most people consider it to be rude to be volunteered
without their consent.

Yeah, that was seriously rude.

--
Bill

Devin L. Ganger wrote:

On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 18:03:57 -0800, Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Devin L. Ganger wrote:

I think you're pursuing this backwards, Mike. You should contact the
current owner of the present mail-to-news gateway and build some sort
of consensus with *him* on what the problem and proposed solution is,
before trying to create a solution that will only muddy the waters up
even farther.

This person made a choice to use Big 8 namespace on his server (and
other servers). His server, his rules. Maybe he can be brought to the
table to discuss why that isn't the easy fix he thought it was and
figure out what the best way to go is from here.

That is way beyond my technical scope I'm afraid. I wouldn't know what
the correct solution would be.

No one ever said you have to do it *alone*. There are folks here who
would be more than willing to *help* you do it, but they're not going
to do it for you.

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, seems very knowledgable about this,
and I would be pleased if you could mail the postgresql list person
about this discussion and Russ's email address.

Russ is a busy person; don't be so quick to volunteer his time for him
unless you're damn sure you have his permission. Even if he were not a
busy person, most people consider it to be rude to be volunteered
without their consent.

Basically if the mailing list-news-gateway doesn't want to be in the big
8 then I'm not going to continue in that process.

Which is fair, but since you're the person who *did* kick this off, you
should probably be the person to email the owner and ask him if he would
be willing to have a conversation with you about the best way to proceed
from here.

I'm frankly scared to talk to him. I'm afraid he might scream at me or
something for starting this off without talking to him first. I would be
pretty upset if someone just tried to promote my mailing-list/news-gateway
to the big 8 without consulting me first. I do have ignorance as an excuse
since until a few days ago I didn't even know how usenet group creation
even worked. Heck, I didn't even know that the postgresql groups were
connected to the mailing list!!!

I was like a regular person trying to litigate a complex legal case pro se.
Now I have egg on my face for biting off more than I could chew.

From what I've heard from someone on this newsgroup is that it didn't fly
over too well in the mailing list member's private emails. I'm assuming
that the list owner was upset. I seriously doubt I have the political
capital to complete the process. I'm sure if someone else decides it is a
worthy cause, they will at least have the precedent of what I did to guide
them.

I tried googling to see if anyone had attempted to make the postgresql
groups non-bogus, but there were no pervious efforts.

In article <2v5jonF2hmf8kU1@uni-berlin.de>, Mike Cox
<mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com> wrote:

I'm pretty much done with this anyway. It is a waste of time putting in
anymore effort since no one seems to want it.

You're way too impatient. Things don't happen here in time scales that
are measured in hours or days. Hang in there. You've got a good start
and some good people supporting what you want to do.

Relax, take your time (and the advise of the wise ones here (not me...
um well, whatever)) and work through the process.

Your proposal is, in its genesis, sound. Now, evolution.

djb

-----------
"No, no, no... you don't understand how radio works! First, I fade my
voice out like this, then cue the organist!"

On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Mike Cox wrote:

1. I tried subscribing to comp.databases.postgresql.general through my
usenet provider thinking it was a regular big 8 group. When it wasn't
found, I sent a request to my news provider to include it.

Most modern news readers allow for multiple news server ... just point
yours at news.postgresql.org, and you can read from there, which has
always been the case ...

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664

In news.groups, Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com> writes:

I'm pretty much done with this anyway. It is a waste of time putting in
anymore effort since no one seems to want it.

Well, the problem from my perspective is that a lot of time and energy is
being spent on worrying about how to propose something or what possible
problems there might be with the group and no one (and I'm not asking you
to do this -- I understand very well where you're coming from and am
extremely sympathetic) has not taken the simple first step of just asking
Marc what the status of the groups are.

If Marc was happy with them being turned into real Big Eight groups and
the technical issues of the gatewaying were worked out with Marco or
someone else, I think everything would fall in place very simply. You'd
get a newsgroup, you wouldn't have to care about the gateway, and we'd be
down to arguing about which mailing lists should be gated.

As is, this thread is currently full of speculation about lots of things
that may or may not be problems and would be cleared up by getting all the
involved parties in the discussion. And everyone seems to be wanting you
to do this, which I think is a little unfair since the gateways aren't
even what you're worried about in the first place and you'd just have to
play telephone.

I really need to *not* be volunteering to do this, since I have a dozen
other things that I've already promised other people to work on, but it's
really frustrating that no one else is doing it either.

--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/&gt;

In news.groups, Devin L Ganger <devin@thecabal.org> writes:

Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com> wrote:

Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, seems very knowledgable about this,
and I would be pleased if you could mail the postgresql list person
about this discussion and Russ's email address.

Russ is a busy person; don't be so quick to volunteer his time for him
unless you're damn sure you have his permission. Even if he were not a
busy person, most people consider it to be rude to be volunteered
without their consent.

No, this is fine, and this didn't bother me at all. I'm happy to tell
Marc my opinion; I'm just going to also have to tell him that I don't have
time to do more than give my opinion right now and I don't know if there's
anyone else who's willing to do more of the footwork.

--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/&gt;

Marc G. Fournier wrote:

On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Mike Cox wrote:

1. I tried subscribing to comp.databases.postgresql.general through my
usenet provider thinking it was a regular big 8 group. When it wasn't
found, I sent a request to my news provider to include it.

Most modern news readers allow for multiple news server ... just point
yours at news.postgresql.org, and you can read from there, which has
always been the case ...

As I already wrote, the actual postgres NG is missing some lists like: "www",
to complete the panorama news.us.postgresql.org have a slony list that does
not exist in the archives. I think that NG is the best way to follow
the discussion and shall be at least a complete container for them and a
complete archive mirror too.

Regards
Gaetano Mendola

On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Russ Allbery wrote:

If Marc was happy with them being turned into real Big Eight groups and
the technical issues of the gatewaying were worked out with Marco or
someone else

what 'techincal issues of the gatewaying'?

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664

At 12:16 AM 11/7/2004, Russ Allbery wrote:

In news.groups, Mike Cox <mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com> writes:

I'm pretty much done with this anyway. It is a waste of time putting in
anymore effort since no one seems to want it.

Well, the problem from my perspective is that a lot of time and energy is
being spent on worrying about how to propose something or what possible
problems there might be with the group and no one (and I'm not asking you
to do this -- I understand very well where you're coming from and am
extremely sympathetic) has not taken the simple first step of just asking
Marc what the status of the groups are.

If Marc was happy with them being turned into real Big Eight groups and
the technical issues of the gatewaying were worked out with Marco or
someone else, I think everything would fall in place very simply. You'd
get a newsgroup, you wouldn't have to care about the gateway, and we'd be
down to arguing about which mailing lists should be gated.

As is, this thread is currently full of speculation about lots of things
that may or may not be problems and would be cleared up by getting all the
involved parties in the discussion. And everyone seems to be wanting you
to do this, which I think is a little unfair since the gateways aren't
even what you're worried about in the first place and you'd just have to
play telephone.

I really need to *not* be volunteering to do this, since I have a dozen
other things that I've already promised other people to work on, but it's
really frustrating that no one else is doing it either.

I'll volunteer. This shouldn't be ThAT hard to fix.

Marc G Fournier <scrappy@postgresql.org> writes:

On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Russ Allbery wrote:

If Marc was happy with them being turned into real Big Eight groups and
the technical issues of the gatewaying were worked out with Marco or
someone else

what 'techincal issues of the gatewaying'?

There are a couple of things that would be ideal to fix. One is that
currently the gateway isn't rewriting message IDs, which means that if
anyone else gates the same mailing lists into some other group, the posts
will conflict and posts will randomly disappear. This isn't a huge issue,
but it would be nice to fix it, since this is a common problem.

The other one is that right now the newsgroup and the mailing list get
different traffic since posts are only gated to the mailing list if the
person is already a member. This can cause confusion (like only half of a
thread being seen on the mailing list). The ideal way to fix this is to
make the newsgroup moderated (which also simplifies the whole process
since then you don't need any news to mail gateway). That way, things can
be set up so that only the messages that make it to the list make it to
the newsgroup.

--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/&gt;

On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, Russ Allbery wrote:

There are a couple of things that would be ideal to fix. One is that
currently the gateway isn't rewriting message IDs, which means that if
anyone else gates the same mailing lists into some other group, the
posts will conflict and posts will randomly disappear. This isn't a
huge issue, but it would be nice to fix it, since this is a common
problem.

We are doing that specifically for that reason ... In order to provide
redundancy, we currently have two mail<->news gateways of the mailing
lists in place, and the MessageIds are what prevents duplicates ...

The other one is that right now the newsgroup and the mailing list get
different traffic since posts are only gated to the mailing list if the
person is already a member. This can cause confusion (like only half of a
thread being seen on the mailing list). The ideal way to fix this is to
make the newsgroup moderated (which also simplifies the whole process
since then you don't need any news to mail gateway). That way, things can
be set up so that only the messages that make it to the list make it to
the newsgroup.

ppl keep saying this, but that is not how the groups are setup ... if
someone isn't subscribed to the list, the message goes to the mailing list
moderator (me) to approve to the list ... the only thing that doesn't go
to the lists is spam ...

----
Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy@hub.org Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664