tanner@ki4pv.UUCP (Tanner Andrews) (02/13/86)
Considering the amount of traffic in this newsgroup, so much of which
consists in >'ed copy of earlier text with the added text "good idea"
or "lousy idea", I think it is time for this newgroup to become
moderated. The moderator could pass the actual text-bearing notes
through, and merely collect and post a tally of the vote-bearing notes
that people didn't think to sned to the person collecting votes.
Name change proposed: net.news.group --> mod.news.group
Vote-bearing messages (via mail please!) to me:
...{decvax|akgua}!ucf-cs!ki4pv!tanner
...{bell labs}!hropus!ki4pv!tanner
ki4pv!tanner@ucf-cs (csnet)
ki4pv!tanner%ucf-cs.csnet@csnet-relay (arpa)
--
<std dsclm, copies upon request> Tanner Andrews, KI4PV
uucp: ...!decvax!ucf-cs!ki4pv!tannergam@amdahl.UUCP (G A Moffett) (02/17/86)
I am opposed to net.news.group being replaced by mod.news.group. I see
the problem that you are talking about, but my objections are two:
[1] It ain't that bad [2] I encourage instead the allegedily hopeless
task of user training.
Net.news.group isn't taking up a lot of disk space, and is in fact
rather moderate, so its abuse in that sense is rather
minor. I, too, am bothered by the followup message (which often
include the entire original article, of course) consisting of simply
"me too" or whatever from the poster. But this has been relatively
rare. When this does happen, send a (polite!) note to the poster that
this sort of thing is discouraged.
And besides having polls on creating/removing newsgroups, we also need
a public forum to discuss the purpose of existing newsgroups from time
to time (should headhunters post to net.jobs? What should we do about
net.sources? etc). These postings are not wasteful but encourage
common understanding and (hopefully) consensus on what do about certain
newsgroup issues.
I am have just finished taking a poll via Usenet on another matter.
While a few have posted their votes, most have not. More importantly,
almost all the votes that were posted also contained reasonable and
informative arguments pro/con, and this is quite valuable to the
undecided voters to help make their opinions.
(Notice that this is a vote, and is being posted to net.news.group.
It was originally going to be mailed to ki4pv!tanner but I felt
it made sufficient number of important points that I decided to
post it instead, because the arguments I provide here may help
people decide for themselves how to vote in this matter).
--
Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,seismo,hplabs}!amdahl!gamrec@mplvax.ARPA (Richard Currier) (02/17/86)
In article <7031@ki4pv.UUCP> tanner@ki4pv.UUCP (Tanner Andrews) writes: > >Name change proposed: net.news.group --> mod.news.group > Let me just say that there has to exist somewhere on the net an open forum to take place that deals with "net organization" and net.news.group seems to be it for the moment. You can moderate 99% of the groups on the net but there has to be at least one "garbage" group like this one left open or the net as a whole will starve for creative input. When 100% of the net is mod- erated control will have passed into the hands of a small fraction of the subscribers. It only takes one free newspaper to preserve a democracy. When that last paper goes under its time to check the expiration date on your passport. -- richard currier marine physical lab u.c. san diego {ihnp4|decvax|akgua|dcdwest|ucbvax} !sdcsvax!mplvax!rec
thomas@utah-gr.UUCP (02/17/86)
In net.news.group article <7031@ki4pv.UUCP> tanner@ki4pv.UUCP (Tanner Andrews) writes: >Considering the amount of traffic in this newsgroup, so much of which >consists in >'ed copy of earlier text with the added text "good idea" >or "lousy idea" We recently (finally) upgraded our news software to (I believe) 2.10.3 (came with the 4.3 beta release), and it has an interesting (optional) feature in inews. If an article is posted (locally) with more "included" text than "original" text, inews rejects it. If every site on the net enabled this feature, it would probably help the over-quoting problem a lot. Of course, to really clamp down (and get lots of "Hitlerite" hate mail), the backbone sites could implement the feature for ALL news passing through (presumably mailing the article back to the originator). Of course, the system is subject to abuse. One can easily bypass the check by changing the string used to mark inclusions to (say) "->" or "' ". But I bet it would help. Resignedly yours, -- =Spencer ({ihnp4,decvax}!utah-cs!thomas, thomas@utah-cs.ARPA)