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Aucbvax.2385 fa.works utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!works Tue Jul 21 13:28:59 1981 WorkS problems >From DREIFU@WHARTON-10 Tue Jul 21 13:11:26 1981 WorkS has now grown to include roughly 750 people on 50 sites across the ARPAnet. The number of topics being discussed at any one time has increased from 1-2 to 4-5. Somewhere between 12-15 messages are submitted to the list each day. Each day's submissions comprise approximately 15,000 characters of material. The result is that WorkS is beginning to suffer from severe problems. Problems which many people have begun to note.

It takes roughly 30 minutes (real time) of processing by the mail server to redistribute one, 1000 character to everyone on the WorkS mailing list. The amount of time required depends on several factors. The most important factor is simply the total number of individual message transmissions that the mail server must do.

For example, consider the difference between distributing one 20,000 character message and 10 2,000 character messages to WorkS. The 20,000 character message will require around 100 minutes (real time) of processing by the mail server. The 10 2,000 character messages will require 300 minutes (real time) of processing by the mail server. Here you see the advantage in redistributing the messages oriented around a single topic as a collection of messages rather than as individual messages. However, that expedient is proving inadequate to deal with WorkS problems.

This means in all probability that WorkS will have to become another digest mailing list. Over the next few days we'll explain what this change entails. In the meantime we will continue with redistributing the incoming messages in topical collections where appropriate.

Comments/opinions/questions to WorkS-REQUEST at MIT-AI.

Hank Dreifus

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