daveb@llama.rtech.UUCP (It takes a clear mind to make it) (06/02/88)
There is discussion of site responsibility for postings, particularly
from commercial USENET service providers like Portal and the Well. Many
people would agree that these sites have a greater moral obligation to
the net because of the perceived lack of skill/knowledge of their user
base.
One way to handle this would be to have a news administartion option
that in effect moderated all outgoing articles from a site. That is,
the site news administator would be required to read and approve an
outgoing article before it was spooled offsite. Yes, this would
increase the administative burden, and slow the propagation marginally.
But there sure seems to be a growing feeling that something should be
done.
I imagine this could be done as a shell wrapper to inews, substituting a
"local" distribution for the user's choice. Given a choice, I'd prefer
that it *not* be done as a compile time CENSOR_OUTGOING option.
Discussion?
-dB
{amdahl, cpsc6a, mtxinu, sun, hoptoad}!rtech!daveb daveb@rtech.uucpkarl@grebyn.com (Karl A. Nyberg) (06/02/88)
In article <2134@rtech.UUCP> daveb@rtech.UUCP (It takes a clear mind to make it) writes: >One way to handle this would be to have a news administration option Originating from Gene Spafford (I can't take credit for other people's ideas): To: karl@grebyn.com (Karl A. Nyberg) Subject: Re: FASCIST mode Date: Wed, 01 Jun 88 09:30:46 EST From: Gene Spafford <umd5!purdue.edu!spaf> ... Second, there is no mechanism like FASCIST to preapprove all postings from a site. The closest I think you could come would be to compile news with the SPOOLINEWS flag set. That will cause all locally posted items to be queue in $NEWSPOOL/.rnews instead of being posted. Then, daily, you go through and review the files there, and if all is acceptable you run "rnews -U" by hand. It's somewhat clumsy but it should do what you want. ... -- Karl -- Karl A. Nyberg karl@grebyn.com, nyberg@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu Grebyn Corporation karl%grebyn.com@umd5.umd.edu P. O. Box 1144 {decuac,umd5}!grebyn!karl Vienna, VA 22180-1144 703-281-2194
cej@ll1a.UUCP (Jones) (06/03/88)
In article <2134@rtech.UUCP>, daveb@llama.rtech.UUCP) writes: > There is discussion of site responsibility for postings, particularly > from commercial USENET service providers like Portal and the Well. Many > people would agree that these sites have a greater moral obligation to > the net because of the perceived lack of skill/knowledge of their user > base. > > One way to handle this would be to have a news administration option > that in effect moderated all outgoing articles from a site. That is, > the site news administrator would be required to read and approve an > outgoing article before it was spooled off site. There is an *easy* way with the current news software for a copy of all postings originating at a site to be mailed to an administrator. Just add a line like: newsadm:all,!to.all.ctl:L:/bin/mail news Of course *all* this does is mail a copy of the posting to "news". While this doesn't provide any "approval" mechanism, at least you always know just what your users are posting. It appeared that portal had absolutely no idea what JJ had posted until net-ers at other sites brought it to their attention. *That* should not have had to be the case. I would like to suggest that the news administrators of *all* sites, not to mention public sites, should know what their posters are putting out on the net. (Potential censorship flamers - if a poster at my site is posting something for the whole world to see, there can't be any harm in me reading it also.) I would rather that I help a confused poster at my site, than have you have to do it because I don't subscribe to the group he posted to. And I would rather tell them about distribution than you. And if someone at my site does ever get abusive, I would rather know first. Why be the last to know? ...ihnp4!ihlpf!ll1a!cej [Just me, not AT&T] Llewellyn Jones
barry@n0atp.UUCP (06/03/88)
Followup-To:barry@n0atp.MN.ORG In article <2134@rtech.UUCP> daveb@rtech.UUCP (It takes a clear mind to make it) writes: >There is discussion of site responsibility for postings, particularly >from commercial USENET service providers like Portal and the Well. Many ^^^^^^^^^^ Why is everyone bashing Portal and the Well because they charge their users. Most Tax supported schools computer centers are supported by the taxpayers at large, and by a certain amount of operating capital (ie read tuition). Because these guys ask the users to pay for the use directly is not a crime. One might argue that companies who invest personnel time (ie time spent in admin of the news, and the time spent reading it) reduce the productivity of the total throughput of the company, and therefore increase the operating costs. Thus, the employees as a whole are charged for USENET access by a reduction in profits (due to a theoretical drop in productivity) and thus have a lower profit sharing or 401K etc. :-) :-) :-). Seriously though, I doubt if at $120/user/yr they make very much profit. Have you priced a phone line recently, and I believe that they have 16 of them (around here that's $400 per month in phone charges alone) >people would agree that these sites have a greater moral obligation to >the net because of the perceived lack of skill/knowledge of their user >base. Why?? Do you feel that the freshman rush in the fall adds any greater level of skill or knowlege to the general user base. Should every university dedicate an administrator to moderate their postings, until in his/her opinion they "make sense." Don't bash them because they don't have the prestige (sp??) of a University, or Fortune 500 R&D site to subscribe to. >Discussion? My opinion Follows: I have read alot of users Howling when the feel their "Freedom of Speech..." was being impaired. Personally, I feel that the only obscenities are Censorship and Predjudice. What most of the Portal bashing seems to be is a need to restrict and censor those who do not have the appropriate status. I believe that the NET needs more public access not less. It is the mark of an intelegent (sp?? -- sorry no spell at this site) civilization that brings divergent views from as many sources as possible into any discussion. I think we need more Portals and Wells. -- Barry S. Berg DOMAIN: barry@n0atp.N0ATP.MN.ORG N0ATP Packet Radio Gateway UUCP: {...}amdahl!bungia!n0atp!barry "Speech is civilization itself--it is silence which isolates." --Thomas Mann "Moderation in all things, most especially moderation." --Author as yet unknown.
daveb@llama.rtech.UUCP (It takes a clear mind to make it) (06/06/88)
This note collects several responses to my note about monitoring site output. One reply, that I forgot to save, said, essentially, stop knee-jerking and dreaming up half-witted technical solutions to a non-problem. I am inclined to think that some level of monitoring is a help, and others have suggested and shown how. In <11@n0atp.UUCP> barry@n0atp.MN.ORG (Barry S. Berg) says >In article <2134@rtech.UUCP> daveb@rtech.UUCP ([me]) writes: >>There is discussion of site responsibility for postings, particularly >>from commercial USENET service providers like Portal and the Well. Many > ^^^^^^^^^^ >Why is everyone bashing Portal and the Well because they charge their >users... >>people would agree that these sites have a greater moral obligation to >>the net because of the perceived lack of skill/knowledge of their user >>base. >Why?? Do you feel that the freshman rush in the fall adds any greater >level of skill or knowlege to the general user base... Probably it is unfair to single out commercial/public access sites. And yeah, the once a semester "what is NULL" debate does get pretty tiring after a few years. In <6156@well.UUCP> dhawk@well.UUCP (David Hawkins) sez: >In the referenced article, daveb@rtech.UUCP wrote: >>There is discussion of site responsibility for postings, particularly >>from commercial USENET service providers like Portal and the Well. Many > ^^^^ >>people would agree that these sites have a greater moral obligation to >>the net because of the perceived lack of skill/knowledge of their user >>base. >... >In the 6 or so months that I've been the System Operator, I've >received zero complaints about postings made from the WELL to the net. >That's zero email and zero phone calls. > >For the last 3 months I've been receiving copies of outgoing postings >to public newsgroups (I don't intercept/read private email or postings >to moderated newsgroups.) We have a fairly high volume of outgoing >articles, but I've only had to cancel one. It was cross-posted to a >ton of newsgroups and basically said, "Please send me email so I'll >know how to send mail to your site." That article never made it off >the WELL. I directed the poster to a simpler method of finding mail >paths. I'm sorry if it appeared I was impugning the WELL in my article. I was offering it more as an example of the type of site (along with portal) that seemed likely to have a supervisory need. The monitoring above is a reasonable level of observation. Though my original article suggested more draconian methods, I recant the thought. The following article explains how this is done, and argues the case for doing it better than I: In <2398@ll1a.UUCP> cej@ll1a.UUCP (Jones) says: > There is an *easy* way with the current news software for >a copy of all postings originating at a site to be mailed to an >administrator. Just add a line like: > > newsadm:all,!to.all.ctl:L:/bin/mail news > > > Of course *all* this does is mail a copy of the posting to > "news". > > While this doesn't provide any "approval" mechanism, at > least you always know just what your users are posting. It > appeared that portal had absolutely no idea what JJ had posted until > net-ers at other sites brought it to their attention. *That* should > not have had to be the case. > > I would like to suggest that the news administrators of > *all* sites, not to mention public sites, should know what their > posters are putting out on the net. (Potential censorship flamers - > if a poster at my site is posting something for the whole world to > see, there can't be any harm in me reading it also.) I would rather > that I help a confused poster at my site, than have you have to do > it because I don't subscribe to the group he posted to. And I would > rather tell them about distribution than you. And if someone at my > site does ever get abusive, I would rather know first. > > Why be the last to know? {amdahl, cpsc6a, mtxinu, sun, hoptoad}!rtech!daveb daveb@rtech.uucp