Re: Request for Opinion...

["David O. Torrey, Jr." <tj@xxxxxxx>]

The new system looks fine to me (I happen to run phpBB elsewhere and think
it works quite well).  But out of curiosity, is there any reason not to
just run a ordinary old-fashioned NNTP server with just those groups?  The
students who were upset are likely heavy users whom I'd expect have
well-configured NNTP clients.  They may not like the switch, even though
the new system looks nice.  Not everyone likes a web interface -- some
still use text. :)

As an alternative, have you contacted any student groups about running
such a service themselves?  USG or LUG come to mind.  USG operates the
ride board, and LUG operates their own IRC server.  Either could get you
out of the news business entirely.

I'm on the LUG list, so I'll CC it there...

Thanks,
Dave

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| David Torrey                     Sr. System Administrator/Programmer   |
| tj@xxxxxxx                       East Engineering Computing Network    |
| (906) 487-1405 voice             Michigan Technological University     |
| (906) 487-1620 fax                  Houghton, MI 49931                 |
| http://www.cee.mtu.edu/~tj/                                            |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+

On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Dan deBeaubien wrote:

> All, ( I sent this to many student services folks as well)
>          As you may be aware, we have recently dropped our Usenet news
> service as part of the IT budget cuts made over the summer. Although most
> of the on-line news articles are available from other sources at no cost, this
> has also eliminated the MTU.ride, MTU.foresale, and MTU.discuss forums.
>
> Because we have had an outcry from the students, and because these
> services have been heavily used in the past, we have invested some effort in
> finding low-cost replacement for the local discussion groups.
>
> To this end, we have put up a test server and are looking for some input
> as to the viability of the system. We are in a bit of a hurry as we would
> like to make
> this service available to students for the upcoming break.
>
> Please let me know what you think - the sooner the better.
>
> The service is running at http://news.mtu.edu
>
> It will most likely be renamed on the web as ride.mtu.edu, forsale.mtu.edu, and
> discuss.mtu.edu of some such thing)
>
> log in using your login and ISO password (same as huskymail)
>
> Thanks,
>        Dan
>
> p.s. Please feel free to distribute this email to other interested parties.
>
>
> Dan deBeaubien
> Director, Distributed Computing Services
> Information Technology, Michigan Technological University
>
> (906)487-3005   dan@xxxxxxx
>