news@entire.UUCP (Usenet Administrator) (08/01/88)
In article <979@acornrc.UUCP>, bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes: > This newsgroup is news.admin. It is supposed to be about the administration > of Usenet news. ........................................................... : > I'd prefer it if this group's description read > > news.admin Discussions among news administrators (moderated). > > Look. This newsgroup has been almost completely subverted in recent weeks, > lowering its signal-to-noise ratio to the point where any useful postings > are likely to be lost in the shuffle. In fact it is already out of hand. > We news admins need a newsgroup in which to exchange information ....... : > Anyone for moderation? I am not proposing censorship, just filtering. I am in agreement with Bob, WRT to the need for some form of moderation, however the moderation should be handled on the local level. Only the site news admins should be allowed to post into news.admin. Similar to how USENET wide moderation works now, when inews receives an article, if it does not contain the Approved: "<news admin>" line, it should be mailed to the admin, for approval. This way the news admin can post to the group without the worry of the current signal/noise ratio "drowning" out the article. Also if a user wishes to post to the group, the news admin has to be involved. I am not the first person to come up with this, however I do think that it is a good idea. The only flaw, is that I am at this time unable to creat the necessary "patches" to make it work. I know that 2.11 uses "m" for moderated, could it use "l" for local moderation ?. Also there was some discussion with "C" news or Rev 3, and local posting permissions for groups, can this concept be used to handle "local moderation". It would really need to be implemented on a complete scale, I would hate to have 2.11 sites suddenly start mailing all the articles in news.admin to the administrator, it's bad enough to have to read all of them once :-{. This is not a call for the admins to start moderation of all the groups comming out of their machine, that is asking for too much, and it is not necessary. It is a request to try and increase the signal/noise ration, in the only useful group that admins have to get information pertaining to the day-to-day operations of keeping a USENET node up and running. News.admin is the first group that I read in the morning, and with my limited time, juggling Unix, SCSI and firmware I hate to have to wade through all the "chaf" just to read the useful articles. Is this a useful idea? What about other admins would you be willing to handle the concept of local moderation for news.admin at your site ? It has the potential of cleaning up one of the more abused groups on the net. -- John A. Gallant UUCP: {..}!rochester!rocksanne!entire!news Defacto Usenet News Administrator news@entire.uucp Entire Inc. Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. Mark Twain
jfh@rpp386.UUCP (John F. Haugh II) (08/02/88)
In article <3234@entire.UUCP> news@entire.UUCP (Usenet Administrator) writes: >I am in agreement with Bob, WRT to the need for some form of moderation, however >the moderation should be handled on the local level. Only the site news admins >should be allowed to post into news.admin. this can already be handled by compiling news with the FASCIST option enabled. the appropriate users can then have entries made in the authorized file. -- John F. Haugh II +--------- Cute Chocolate Quote --------- HASA, "S" Division | "USENET should not be confused with UUCP: killer!rpp386!jfh | something that matters, like CHOCOLATE" DOMAIN: jfh@rpp386.uucp | -- apologizes to Dennis O'Connor
weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) (08/05/88)
In article <3234@entire.UUCP>, news@entire (Usenet Administrator) writes: >> Look. This newsgroup has been almost completely subverted in recent >> weeks, lowering its signal-to-noise ratio to the point where any use- >> ful postings are likely to be lost in the shuffle. >In fact it is already out of hand. This group went to the dogs starting with the Jay-Jay discussion, and hasn't gotten much better since. >> We news admins need a newsgroup in which to exchange information ....... >> Anyone for moderation? I am not proposing censorship, just filtering. >I am in agreement with Bob, WRT to the need for some form of moderation, >however the moderation should be handled on the local level. Only the >site news admins should be allowed to post into news.admin. And I think maybe the only moderation here should be for newsadmins. The ratio of newsadmins posting articles about MES to MESs posting articles about MES has been rather, uh, large. The only explanation I can think of is thought processes of the "well, since I'm the proud newsadmin of my very own Crayola-64*, I guess it's OK for *me* to post stupid flaming drivel here" type must be very common. You know who you are. Am I right? ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 (*)Crayola is a registered trademark of Binney & Smith Inc, Easton, PA
heiby@mcdchg.UUCP (Ron Heiby) (08/08/88)
Usenet Administrator (news@entire.UUCP) writes: > The only flaw, is that I am at this time unable to creat the > necessary "patches" to make it work. I know that 2.11 uses "m" for moderated, > could it use "l" for local moderation? You don't need any '"patches" to make it work'. The code is there already. The mailpaths file can be extended, as ngmatch() is called to try to find a specific address to deliver the newsgroups' articles before falling back on the "catch-all", "backbone". The file is searched in order, so if we insert (before the "backbone" line) a line like: news.admin usenet any non-approved article in news.admin will be mailed to user "usenet" on the local machine. -- Ron Heiby, heiby@mcdchg.UUCP Moderator: comp.newprod & comp.unix "Failure is one of the basic Freedoms!" The Doctor (in Robots of Death)