edward@ukecc.UUCP (Edward C. Bennett) (09/13/85)
One of my biggest pet peeves concerning the news is postings from people who OBVIOUSLY have not read the net.announce.newusers articles. What I suggest is this. 1. Make postnews a priviledged program. 2. Allow access to a user only after they have demonstrated that they have read net.announce.newusers. 3. Possibly require potential posters to be read-only users for a period of time until they become familiar with the net and it's rules. Of course this puts more work on SAs and NAs, but we are the ones responsible for the quality of this net. This also assumes that all administators out there care about what comes out of thier site and about the continued existance of the net. I'm not proposing restriction here so much as I am encouraging education. Ignorance of the rules runs rampant on USENET and I believe that with a little work much of this ignorance can be eliminated. -- Edward C. Bennett UUCP: ihnp4!cbosgd!ukma!ukecc!edward /* A charter member of the Scooter bunch */
chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (09/17/85)
In article <241@ukecc.UUCP> edward@ukecc.UUCP (Edward C. Bennett) writes: > What I suggest is this. > 1. Make postnews a priviledged program. > 2. Allow access to a user only after they have demonstrated > that they have read net.announce.newusers. How about 'understood' instead of 'read'? > 3. Possibly require potential posters to be read-only users > Of course this puts more work on SAs and NAs, but we are the >ones responsible for the quality of this net. The only problem is that the sites with the users most in need of this kind of handholding are the sites where there isn't an identifiable SA or the SA simply won't do the few hours of work neccessary (updating .newsrc, upgrading software, passing out documents) that they ought to be doing. Ignorant users can almost always be traced back to a missing or incompetent SA, and giving that non-person another job to not do only puts an added pressure on the SA's that DO do the job -- the ones that need it most will continue to simply ignore it anyway... sigh. -- Chuq Von Rospach nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA {decwrl,hplabs,ihnp4}!nsc!chuqui Take time to stop and count the ewoks...
dhb@rayssd.UUCP (David H. Brierley) (09/23/85)
One thing that I have done at my site is to make the default distribution 'local'. That way a user has to at least figure out how to use postnews before he/she can bother the entire net. I also changed postnews so that if the user specifies a distribution of 'net' they are then asked if they 'really want the ENTIRE world to see the article'. These changes were easy to make and have resulted in a slightly higher level of user awareness. -- Dave Brierley Raytheon Co.; Portsmouth RI; (401)-847-8000 x4073 ...!decvax!brunix!rayssd!dhb ...!allegra!rayssd!dhb ...!linus!rayssd!dhb
wcs@ho95e.UUCP (Bill.Stewart.4K435.x0705) (09/24/85)
> One thing that I have done at my site is to make the default > distribution 'local'. That way a user has to at least figure > out how to use postnews before he/she can bother the entire > net. I also changed postnews so that if the user specifies > a distribution of 'net' they are then asked if they 'really > want the ENTIRE world to see the article'. These changes were easy >.... > Dave Brierley Raytheon Co.; Portsmouth RI; (401)-847-8000 x4073 > ...!decvax!brunix!rayssd!dhb ...!allegra!rayssd!dhb ...!linus!rayssd!dhb The version of postnews that came with my 2.10.2 systems already did this. If you post to *.wanted, it will ask you if this is an article you'd post in your local newspaper (maybe just the new jersey version does this :-) ? ), and for other groups does some reasonable pruning on the distributions. THE DEFAULT ORDERING OF NEWSGROUPS STARTS OUT WITH NET.ANNOUNCE and NET.ANNOUNCE.NEWUSERS. THIS MEANS NEW PEOPLE ALWAYS! GET THEM FIRST. EVEN IF YOU HAVE 2.10.1 (or earlier?) YOU CAN CHANGE THIS FOR YOUR SYSTEM, SO NEW USERS GET THOSE GROUPS FIRST. It also has the nice feature of allowing users to order their .newsrc files in the order they'd like to read the news. This means that I don't have to read the news in the same order everyone else on my system does. -- ## Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs