[news.admin] ndla!root accidental unmoderation of rec.humor.funny

njs@scifi.UUCP (Nicholas J. Simicich) (12/16/88)

ndla, of course, is a downstream site from me.  The administrator is
Dan Platt, and it is a personal system.  He has attempted to get his
map entry posted, and has failed to do so (I told him where to mail it
last night, but this presumes that I know where to mail).  You should
also see in your control newsgroup a number of other messages from
him.  What he had attempted to do was, after reinstalling his O/S, to
recreate the newsgroups that I send him, including rec.humor.funny.

Somehow these messages got distribution of usa rather than local.  And
I wasn't at home, so they slipped through to bywater, which passes
them to uunet, before I could turn the modem off and delete the
messages.  I immediately sent a note to Dan asking him what was going
on, and put out a "newgroup rec.humor.funny moderated" to the usa
distribution, which was the same distribution that got the "newgroup
rec.humor.funny".  I see by a quick look at control that my attempt to
put out the counter-move may not have been effective, as at least four
other sysadmins have put out a "newgroup rec.humor.funny moderated".

One might presume that this was an attempt by Dan to submit an opinion
on rec.humor.funny in an informal manner. :-)  I think that I can
assure you that nothing is farther from the truth.  It was done simply
because Dan is not an experienced admin (for that matter, neither am
I) and because the default for newgroup is to unmoderate the group.

If you must email him, try uunet!bywater!scifi!ndla!platt.  Or maybe
not, as I've already mumbled at him about being careful.  Followups
here won't be effective, as he doesn't get this group.  

-- 
Nick Simicich --- uunet!bywater!scifi!njs --- njs@ibm.com (Internet)