[Pan-users] Re: [0.99] Meaning of 'Expire old articles' ?

[Duncan]

walt <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Tue, 06 Jun 2006 14:34:54
-0700:

> Each server has an option named 'Expire old article' which may be set for
> 1 month, 2 months, or 'never'.
> 
> Does 'expiring' an article mean deleting an article if it no longer exists
> on the server -- or deleting it even if it *does* still exist on the
> server?

I believe it means regardless of whether it exists on the server.

pre-0.90 pan expired based on whether it was on the server or not -- only,
altho you could set up filters and rules to expire stuff before it left
the server or manually delete overviews, and you could copy posts off to
local folders to prevent their expiration.  However, pre-0.90 pan was much
more tied to individual servers than 0.90+.

With the combined server viewpoint of 0.90+, there came a more
pressing need to control local expiration independent of what was on the
server.  It's possible, even likely, that users will be using ISP-bundled
servers that expire stuff in a matter of days or even hours, in
combination with third party servers that have a longer expiration cycle,
weeks or months.  Because the viewpoint is centralized, no longer server
independent, expiring based on whether it's on the server or not makes
little sense.

Actually, expiring based on server at all makes little sense with the new
viewpoint.  The idea would be to make that a per-group setting, and to let
the user specify it in days rather than months, as a two-week expiration
on binary groups would seem quite reasonable, while the same user may want
to keep text group posts from the same server around for six months (say
180 days) or even indefinitely.  At present, that's not possible, because
there really aren't any per-group settings.  Charles has hinted that
per-group setting are a post-1.0 feature, at least for posting profile
retention (the context in which I asked the question, as I'd really like
that info retained per group as it was pre-0.90), but there are really
quite a few settings that make the most sense as per-group settings, and
retention is one of them.  If pan continues down the group centric
viewpoint that 0.90+ initiated, and both Charles and many long time
pan users (as demonstrated by being group/list regulars) seem to agree
that's the way to go, ultimately, many/most setting will have to be per
group, possibly with a pan-wide preferences default, but with per group
preferences that can overrule that for many/most settings.

Meanwhile, we don't yet have per-group settings for anything, it's all
global or in the case of expiration settings, per server.  However, that's
still ambiguous, because the behavior of a group carried on three servers,
one set to one month retention, one to two months, and one to forever,
isn't defined in any way clear to the user.  Will the messages in the
group disappear at the end of a month, as the one server is set, or never,
as the other, or at the two month compromise of the middle one?  Or will
it depend on which server happens  to have been added first or last, or on
which server gets updated first or last?



-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman