Awatmath.1373 net.general utzoo!decvax!watmath!bstempleton Mon Jan 4 21:13:20 1982 contact user names First of all, I think this discussion, hopefully short, belongs here because I was not so much thinking of this as something to help maintain the USENET, but the UUCP network. As news administrator, I get requests from time to time from people here of the form: "I know John Doe at Blat university. How do I send him mail?" Asuming I know the site name, and a uucp path, I still have to find the userid. I probably don't know the naming convention, or if it's like it is at my site, don't know the middle initial. I want to do a grep on that system. I will usually look through old news to find a name from that site and perhaps send an inqiry to that person. Obviously this is not the best tack, so a contact name is better. Usenet forms are nice but they get out of date and expire. Most sites have very few around, especially the newer ones. Again, this is something to do with the uucp network (and it's a good idea for the arpanet too!) Some sites don't want to give away ids - that's fine, they don't have to with this method. The name news, although a fine name, I guess, does not indicate we are talking uucp net, not usenet here. I don't want to debate the name much more. Since most people needed SU powers just to install themselves into the net with their L.sys, SU powers should be availible to set up this alias or account. (At least I think so Mark) This is a place for the 'You have a poll' message! Lets get this decided within the week if we can, or if we must, continue the discussion through private mail. If net.general is not the place for this, then perhaps a group on the uucp net as opposed to the usenet is an idea? Sorry for the flame, O ye of slow data rates. Brad Templeton ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.