peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) (07/05/83)
Agreed, it is difficult to define abuse, and that argues for a flexible
system such as net readers mailing to people they consider abusers.
Such responses, though, are no basis for administrative action unless
they are cc'd to an administrator, and are likely to comment on the
positions taken rather than on whether the submitters are abusing the net.
Even if they are messages such as "Your recent submission to XXXX
contained no new material relevant to the ongoing discussion and could
have been said in half the space anyway", I feel the recipient is
likely to INTERPRET them simply as negative comments on the position taken.
Solid character counts and ranks are unemotional measures that would
cause self-restraint.
If the news stats are interpreted intelligently, I still think they
provide good feedback. Dave's bug reporter will know the worth of his/her
contributions and be reasonable enough to interpret any resulting
automatically generated (polite) mail in the right spirit. His long-
winded single-article submitter could be caught by counting characters
sent, rather than simply counting articles.
I don't know if the net is showing signs of serious strain caused by
overuse yet, but adding this feedback system, which appears to cost
little, seems a prudent step for the future. The only danger I could
see would be narrow-minded interpretation of the stats by system admin's,
possibly removing net access to the bug reporter. This seems unlikely,
though.
For an interesting account of problems we COULD be experiencing, but
(to my knowledge) don't, see a paper on the Etiquette of Laurel,
Xerox's internal messaging system, in the second issue of the ACM Trans.
on Office Information Systems.
peter rowley, U. Toronto CSRG
{cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!peterr
or {cwruecmp,duke,linus,lsuc,research}!utzoo!utcsrgv!peterr