mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (07/23/85)
In article <81@brl-tgr.ARPA> wmartin@brl-bmd.UUCP writes: >>On the subject of restricting the length of articles.[...] >>Why don't we just find the user that posted the most for a month and cut >>him/her off for the following month. That might add an incentive to >>keep things short. As it is, the largest poster probably gets a kick out >>of being at the top of the list. >That brings to mind something I've been wondering about -- what happened >to those "statistics" postings we used to see? Have they been moved to >some group I don't happen to read? Anyway, I always DID think it was a >contest -- I was No. 2 once, and it gave me a warm feeling (or was that >heartburn?:-). I don't think I ever made No. 1, but maybe... >Actually, again there is a problem here -- sometimes the "mostest" >poster can be someone whose name is on a gateway (like the SF-Lovers >moderator) or maybe someone like the person at UT that posts the >(supposedly) daily "Stardate" articles in net.astro. So, they should >not be penalized. They are providing a net service, not imposing on it. Examination of the statistics (posted in mod.newslists) shows that posters to net.sources.mac are almost invariably on top (unless something huge goes into net.sources). Even the religion and philosophy groups, where huge quotations are the norm, cannot compete. Personally I think there's not enough to be gained with length restrictions to justify the problems. THere are occaissionally very long and GOOD articles. Besides, since every news-reading program I've seen shows you how long the article is, anyone can skip articles which are too long. I think there's much more to be gained by controlling cross-postings, especially since the side effects are much easier to control. Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe "Do you know what this means? It means that this damn thing doesn't work at all!"