karl@sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer) (06/25/88)
I like Usenet a lot and I think most people who are on would like to stay on. So, people against public access sites, have you ever given thought to how you'll get on Usenet after you leave school or change jobs? Will providing Usenet access be a prerequisite when choosing your next employer? If not, you'll either have to make use of your extensive contacts throughout the usenet community to wrangle a signon from somebody, buy your own Unix system, or get on a public access system. There have been public access sites on the net for a long time and many have a long history of positive contributions to the net. I believe the de-facto backbone killer would qualify as such a system. I think a public access site that was truly "public access" would inherently have a "lower common denominator" than usenet as a whole, because the users of most usenet sites are either in college or have been in college and are typically employed in some professional, technical capacity which would be less true for the public at large. Note that there is still a certain technical competence required to get on in that one must purchase or have access to a computer or terminal and modem and learn how to use it. If one were to put public access terminals in truck stops, I presume the ratio of postings that most usenet people would find offensive would be higher even than on full-priveledges-on-first-call Fido boards :-) I don't think it's impossible to have non-controversial public access sites on the net. I think the policies of some public access systems have allowed flagrantly innappropriate and irresponsible postings to be disseminated because the siteops don't monitor their system closely enough and don't make their policies clear (if they have any) before turning neophytes loose with full network posting priveledges. The JJ fiasco would have been way less severe if: 1) the site admins at portal had quickly posted a cancel message and pulled his access, 2) the inevitable scores of people who posted followups flaming the guy (rather very deservedly torching him and maybe portal through email) had restrained themselves, 3) it could have been ignored rather than beaten to death, but since that's how we come to a consensus on the net, I guess this part has to be done. Although "JJ" did post from a PA site, one would not have to think very hard to imagine similar postings originating from a university or business. Our policies at sugar, plus I suppose that we're a pretty small site, have, so far (knock on wood), kept us from having similar problems. We require that people apply for access via postal mail and supply a return address that is not a P. O. box. Thus, barring their use of a blind mail drop, we know and they know that we know a physical address where they can be found. Along with their password, they receive in the mail a letter making quite clear what their responsibilities are, the extent of the network they'll be posting to, and various permutations of what will happen happen to them if they don't abide by our rules ranging from losing their access to our full cooperation and assistance to any government agencies wishing to prosecute them. We originally had two levels of access, where well-behaved local-only users would be upgraded to full net access, but we've had so little trouble that dropped it. I do like the idea of holding messages posted to inordinately large numbers of newsgroups for review by the siteop, where postnews would say something like "hmm, you've crossposted that to an awfully large number of groups, I'll hold it until the sysop can have a look at it." or maybe just do it silently. -- -- uunet!sugar!karl
erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend) (06/28/88)
In article <2180@sugar.UUCP>, karl@sugar.UUCP (Karl Lehenbauer) writes: > Although "JJ" did post from a PA site, one would not have to think very > hard to imagine similar postings originating from a university or business. I've noticed several postings from AT&T places that were blatant ads for business operated by friends or spouses or just "good buddies". Nobody flames them. While I disagree with the intent of "JJ", I disagree even more with the volumes of garbage spawned by what virtually everybody agreed was a "bad thing" to post. -- Skate UNIX or go home, boogie boy... "But why should I type "rm -r $HOME" if I want to play trek???" J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007 ..!bellcore!tness1!/