peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) (07/04/83)
Thanks to the poster of the news statistics; they provide valuable feedback
to the user community; I'd like to see them done regularly (once a month?)--
the work involved could be shared between sites.
This may well provide a sociological solution to net overuse. Abusers
are easily identified and will probably restrain themselves. If they
do not, system administrators will have the information to take appropriate
action.
Anarchy, read as "lack of central control", avoids the CPU cycles and
communications time required to enforce such control. If feedback
mechanisms exist to regulate overall behaviour, an efficient system can
result. The net survey provides the feedback, with a pretty low use of
resources. All "crimes" are automatically recorded and "criminals"
easily identified. Better still, potential criminals are warned that their
behaviour is bordering on the criminal, resulting in self-restraint.
The "technocratic" solutions proposed by no means guarantee success (they,
too, rely on self-restraint) and will consume substantial resources.
So, regular posting of news statistics allows peer pressure to function to
regulate use of the net, as well as providing system administrators with
indications of abuse at their sites. However, as abusers and potential
abusers may not read the statistics, automatically generated mail messages
to such people are warranted. One might, for example, take the average
number of postings by the top 100 or 200 posters and send (polite and
informative) mail to those who posted more than twice the average, with copies
to their system administrators.
All this scheme needs is for some site to compile and post the statistics
and, if mail messages are to be sent, agreement on the criteria to be used
to decide who to send them to. I don't know enough about the ins-&-outs
of news to handle the statistics, but I'll gather and summarize opinions
on what constitutes abuse of the net, in numerical terms.
A similar solution may work for urging administrators to update their
news programs, particularly if mail messages are sent indicating exactly
how the new version may be obtained and installed.
peter rowley, U. Toronto CSRG
{cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!peterr
or {cwruecmp,duke,linus,lsuc,research}!utzoo!utcsrgv!peterrdmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) (07/04/83)
The problem with Peter's suggestion is that the posting of many articles does not necessarily constitute "abuse". To take an extreme example, compare two net users, one of whom posts a large number of articles about system bugs or enhancements which are of use to a large portion of the machines on the net, and another who posts a single article which is several hundred lines of argument so ridiculous that almost no one reads through it. Now, which of these two is an "offender"? The first has performed a useful service, the second has annoyed a large number of people, and yet it is the first person who will show up in statistics of "net abusers". The practice of human readers sending mail to people who have posted garbage (in the opinion of the reader) at least causes feedback which depends on the content of the articles posted. A scheme of automatic complaining letters based solely on number or length of articles posted does not. Dave Martindale
cfv@packet.UUCP (07/04/83)
The problem with a using statistics on number of entries is VERY misleading.
There is a lot of difference between someone who puts 50-75 entries to
net.unix-wizards/net.general asking (or answering!) questions and someone
who puts the same number of entries into net.jokes. Its not the quantity
of entries that counts (there are a few people on the net that spend a lot
of time helping others that might need special dispensation for that) and
the quality of the entries. To put together something based on quality
suddenly puts human interpretation in the thing, and that can lead to
misuses of the control.
I reiterate: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
On a more serious side, if we are REALLY worried about volume on the net
(which seems to be what this whole problem boils down to) then what needs to
be done is limit topics of dubious value (such as (*gasp*) net.jokes?)
rather than trying to limit individuals. If a person WANTS to drop 100 or
200 messags a month there is no reason why he can't just get 4 or 5 accounts
and screw up the statistics anyway...
--
>From the dungeons of the Warlock:
Chuck Von Rospach
ucbvax!amd70!packet!cfv
(chuqui@mit-mc) <- obsolete!laura@utcsstat.UUCP (07/05/83)
1: Some people submit more news than others. 2: These people are abusing the net. Q.E.D. Would whoever came up with this piece of logic please explain it? It seems akin to the "all men are created equal and if they arent equal now by God we will make them equal" argument which has been raised in net.flame. If you think that people are abusing the net, send mail to them telling them so. If you think that certain newsgroups are a waste of time, dont subscribe. If as a site administrator you feel that a group is entirely useless, dont even receive the group! (But become a *node*. Miserable cretins who sign up to be a news forwarder and then cut off the news feed in groups they deem "unimportant" have no business in netnews distribution.) If anyone sends me any automatic messages concerning my net abuse I will quite cheerfully fling them to /dev/null. Save your breath, folks, unless you have a good argument. Laura Creighton utcsstat!laura (second most prolific person on the net, July 1st survey)
tjt@masscomp.UUCP (07/05/83)
Don't be too hasty in equating large volumes of submission with abuse of the network. Maybe we should add a rating system to news so that we can also get a monthly list of the 10 best (and worst) usenet articles (on net.flame, of course).
ra@rlgvax.UUCP (07/06/83)
It would be trivial for me to submit the usage statistics on a regular
basis. I already have an awk script (How do people live without awk?)
that does the work.
Please mail me if you are (or are not) interested in seeing these
sort of statistics posted on a regular basis. If you are interested,
please indicate how often (weekly/monthly/etc) and what you would like
to see( averages/standard deviations/breakdown various ways).
If there is sufficient interest, I will start posting them on a regular
basis.
Also, if there is to be a regular posting, should a new newgroup
be created for that purpose (net.news.stats?)? Or should it just
be lumped in with net.news?
Rick Adams
CCI Office Systems Group
{allegra|seismo|mcnc|ihnp4}!rlgvax!ratim@unc.UUCP (07/07/83)
It is very difficult for me to believe that someone who posts
significantly more than most others would be unaware of this fact.
Given this, I fail to see what possible value there could be in
informing this "abuser" of the fact.
In fact, most worthless articles seem to be posted by infrequent
contributors. There are exceptions, of course.
______________________________________
The overworked keyboard of Tim Maroney
duke!unc!tim (USENET)
tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill