SPOOL:  Simultaneous Peripheral Operations Off Line (On Line?).

[TNHD; from IBM.  Contrived, most likely...]

I'd be more likely to use /var/news and have it be its own filesystem.

#: From current-users-owner-greywolf=starwolf.com@NetBSD.ORG Thu May 22 16:01:50 1997
#: X-Sender: kpneal@mindspring.com
#: Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 17:34:28 -0400
#: To: current-users@NetBSD.ORG
#: From: "Kevin P. Neal" <kpneal@pobox.com>
#: Subject: /var/mail vs /var/spool/mail
#: Delivered-To: current-users@NetBSD.ORG
#:
#: Why is user email stored in /var/mail instead of /var/spool/mail?
#:
#: What is the purpose of /var/spool? When machines are news servers, where
#: does the news go /var/spool/news?
#:
#: It seems like spool is meant to be considerably larger than /var, so why
#: is mail stored by default on /var/? 
#:
#: Anybody feel like explaining exactly what "spool" means, anyway? 
#:
#: Just wondering. 
#:
#: And while I'm here: Why do so many Unix installations that will never ever
#: use UUCP still come default with uucppublic drwxrwxrwx? Isn't that just
#: asking for abuse?
#: --
#: XCOMM Kevin P. Neal, Junior, Comp. Sci.     -   House of Retrocomputing
#: XCOMM  mailto:kpneal@pobox.com              -   http://www.pobox.com/~kpn/
#: XCOMM  kpneal@eos.ncsu.edu              Spoken by Keir Finlow-Bates:
#: XCOMM "Good grief, I've just noticed I've typed in a rant. Sorry chaps!"
#:
#: