jaffe@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Saul) (09/11/87)
Hello, I would like to introduce myself to those who don't know who I am. I am the moderator of The SF-LOVERS Digest on the Internet. I have been watching the discussions in this group about "what belongs here" and rec.arts.books vs rec.arts.sflovers etc., with much amusement. I have been the moderator of the Internet digest for about 4 years now and I have seen this discussion about 2 or three times a year. I'd like to explain what the current situation is to all of you and make a major proposal. My understanding of the history of things is that along around about 1975 the digest was created on the ARPAnet. Without getting into a long historical lecture, I'll just state that since that time it has grown considerably and now reaches nearly 20,000 people on several networks including ARPAnet, BITnet, CSnet, MILnet and yes, even USEnet. The digest has recently been given world-wide attention by being mentioned in the July issue of Omni magazine. When the newsgroups were first formed they were tied into the digest on the ARPAnet in such away so that anything posted here went to the digest and vice versa. Although the digest's "home" has changed over the years (it did not start at Rutgers) this link has been maintained whenever possible. I personally feel that in the long run, both groups (USEnet netnews and Internet digest readers) have benefitted from this link. For those of you who don't know what a digest is or what a moderator does, it's simple. I sift through the large number of messages that come in, edit them to remove unnecessary headers, signatures, and so forth. I also make an attempt to filter out the 100 or so messages naming the author or the title of a book/story and select the smallest number of messages that answer the question with the most information. Other moderating tasks include correcting spelling (but not grammer or word usage) and reducing the number of lines of quoted messages so that only pertinent lines are quoted (and not whole messages). These messages are then grouped together and put into a single message, the digest. For the last year or so, the digests have been more or less single topic, i.e. talking about sf books, or films, or startrek or television shows, etc. I have also been maintaining archives of back issues as well as keeping online such often asked for things like episode guides and humorous fiction such as The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Network. You folks reading the rec.arts.sf-lovers group are obviously unsatisfied with the large number of messages that you feel don't belong there, I am unhappy because I don't get access to things like rec.arts.startrek which Internet people are interested in. I would like to pose a solution to all of the various problems that I hope everyone can be happier with. I am hereby proposing that several new groups be created for discussing sf related subjects. These groups will be moderated at the same time that I do moderation on the Internet side and will be tied into the digest. Basically what would happen is that once I have grouped messages together for a digest, I would send the individual, edited/moderated messages to the appropriate netnews group and then create the digest. Therefore we could have the following groups rec.arts.sf.books, rec.arts.sf.films, rec.arts.sf.television, rec.arts.sf.startrek, rec.arts.sf.drwho, and rec.arts.sf.misc (a catchall) and there would be someone (namely me) insuring that the right messages go to the right groups. Essentially, what is being proposed is the creation of moderated groups which would contain the "best" of the unmoderated group. The old group would remain "as is." So that you have all of the facts before voting, here are some of the disadvantages. First, I am only human and the messages would appear in the appropriate groups only as fast as I work on the digest. There would likely be a lag of 1-10 days between my receiving a message and it's getting to the appropriate group. Second, I am not sure yet how to handle cross-postings from other groups. I have discussed this with the backbone and they have agreed to this proposal. In fact, they view it as an experiment in "post-moderation" groups and they are quite excited about doing it. I would think that there has been enough discussion in this group about it so please just mail me your vote, either "yea" or "nay." As I understand the voting procedure, only those votes which are mailed to me directly at the addresses below will be counted. VOTES POSTED TO ANY NEWGROUPS WILL NOT BE COUNTED. The sooner the votes are tabulated the sooner we can put this into effect (if enough agree) and get back to talking about sf as we all, presumably, would rather be doing. -- Saul Jaffe Rutgers University ARPA: Jaffe@elbereth.rutgers.edu UUCP: ...!rutgers!elbereth.rutgers.edu!jaffe
jef@unisoft.uucp (Jef Poskanzer) (09/15/87)
In the referenced message, jaffe@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Saul) wrote: > My understanding of the history of things is that along >around about 1975 the digest was created on the ARPAnet. Try 1980. I wish I knew where this story about 1975 came from. Charles McGrew had the same date for HUMAN-NETS, which was also started in 1980. Anyway, I'd like to express my strong opposition to Saul's proposal. I've already mailed him my NO vote. Here are my objections: -- Saul mostly talks about what would happen once the messages get to him. He is less clear about what would happen on the Usenet side. The un-moderated rec.arts.sf-lovers would remain, but what about .startrek and .drwho? (Not that I read them, but some people do.) -- Saul's proposal doesn't fix anything on the Usenet side. For those of us who don't care to read moderated groups when un-moderated are available, things will be exactly as before. Assuming .startrek and .drwho stick around, there will still be Trek and Who stuff from the Internet showing up in the wrong newsgroup. There will still be people like Laura Creighton, who don't want to wade through junk about films and TV shows to get to the messages about SF books. There will still be perennial calls to split r.a.sf-l into sub-groups. -- On the other hand, if the plan is for some or all of the un-moderated groups to eventually go away, we will be left without timely access to SF news. We will have to rely on a moderator who apparently neither knows nor cares very much about Usenet. In summary, Saul's proposal is not completely thought out, and is likely to be either useless or harmful. A counter proposal: create the same sub-groups that Saul suggests, but leave them un-moderated. This will let Usenetters make optimum use of the medium. On Saul's end, he can construct his digests as usual, with the slight advantage of having some topic segregation done for him. Cross-posted messages would be no problem under this scheme. If anyone cares to vote on this idea, I'll be glad to count and report. DO NOT POST YOUR VOTES. --- Jef Jef Poskanzer unisoft!jef@ucbvax.Berkeley.Edu ...ucbvax!unisoft!jef "A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition." -- John Adams ...and now, a word from our sponsor: "The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of UniSoft Corp, its staff, or its management."
ssm@ohgua.UUCP (09/29/87)
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