nyssa@abnji.UUCP (nyssa of traken) (10/29/85)
I must applaud Gene Spafford for the bravery in the deletion of
two thriving groups, furthermore, I support those decisions.
When net.bizarre was created, after taking a look, I decided
to support it. Within a week, the amount of rubbish posted to
the group warranted its destruction, it was not bizarre, it
was garbage.
net.internat is another matter. It would appear to be a good idea,
it has support of a major UNIX organisation, it has demonstrated
traffic. It's creation, however, was done incorrectly. The
creators are now going through the normally accepted channels to
create this group. I wish them luck; it is an idea with merit.
(Perhaps, to avoid suggestions of a eur.* group, they could
post a geographic distribution of votes.)
Should the decision be made that it be a moderated group, I would
volunteer to act as a moderator. This would (probably) not be a solo
job, there ought to be a moderators on both sides of the Atlantic
(and Pacific; perhaps one in Australia and one in Japan/Korea, one
on the continent and one in the UK, and a few in North America).
Furthermore, to prevent duplication, the moderators ought to
have a separate mailing list available to them to handle follow-ups
and the like. Should volume not justify that many, they could be cut.
I suspect that for the net to continue, it will have to go to
greater moderation to cut volume. Here, it takes me about one
hour per day to read that that I want to read, often I just
skip many articles, and that is a small fraction of what the net
provides. Many articles are of a "me too" nature. That does get
tedious, it is a problem with the topology of the net.
Unfortunately, moderation of non-technical groups usually does not
work when there is an unmoderated group with the same mandate. That
I have seen first hand as moderator of both mod.politics and (now
defunct) mod.general. I doubt if that is likely to change in the
near future.
The problem with deleting non-technical groups is that there
are people who are attracted to the net by the non-technical
groups, then discover the technical groups.
The solution to this is difficult. Perhaps some of the "soap-box"
non-technical groups could be moderated, but that hints of censorship.
Perhaps informational non-technical groups could do the same
(net.astro, for example). The solutions I don't have. Any
implementation is likely to change the character for the net, hopefully
for the better.
--
James C. Armstrong, Jnr. {ihnp4,cbosgd,akgua}!abnji!nyssa