z (11/05/82)
I agree that we don't want to be too heavy-handed about enforcing guidelines. It seems that the vast majority of errors in posting to net.general are due to ignorance of existing policies. I think that if the news software simply printed a big warning whenever anyone tried to post to net.general, and maybe even required an extra confirmation, this would eliminate the majority of the problem. Steve Zimmerman decvax!cca!z z@cca
sjb (11/06/82)
I wouldn't want the software printing out any long warnings. This would be especially bad for people who have to read the stuff at 300 baud.
furuta (11/07/82)
Concerning "inappropriate" material being posted to net.general: I think it is much easier to modify one's own's reactions to particular kinds of material on the net than it it to convince every reader to figure out what they're doing so that they do it right. Perhaps the following tale will bear out my point: On the Arpanet, there is no concept of centralized newsgroups receiving single copies of articles as is found here. Instead, individual copies of articles are mailed to everyone who's interested in receiving them. Someone wanting to send out a message to everyone on a mailing list posts it to a particular mailbox at some network site. If someone wants to be added to the list, they send mail to the list's coordinator. There's a pretty commonly followed convention that if there is a list whose mailbox is, say, Info-Graphics@UTexas-20, then the address for the coordinator will be the list's address with "-Request" appended to it, Info-Graphics-Request@UTexas-20. Despite this convention and despite frequent messages sent out by list coordinators, one regularly sees administrative messages being directed to the list as a whole rather than to the list's administrator. Indeed, in the latest example of this which I received, someone sent the entire list a request for addition which included, in the text of the request message, a previous message announcing the list and asking in large letters that requests for addition be sent to a given -Request address rather than to the list as a whole. Occasionally, these rogue request for addition or removal messages make it onto Usenet, causing mass confusion for the Usenet readers. The point of this message is that there is probably no way in which any kind of administrative regulation or cajolling is going to be able to prevent this kind of misuse of the Arpanet mailing lists. Similarly, I find it quite improbable that administrative action (even when carried out by computer program) will keep garbage from making its way to net.general. I suggest that the proper way to handle this kind of situation is to first send a mail message to the originator of the offending article, preferably constructively suggesting a better newsgroup to which the article should have been directed in the first place. Receiving several dozen messages in response to a misplaced article will probably cause the sender to be more cautious the next time. Following that, I suggest that the next best thing to do about these inappropriate articles is to just ignore them. --Rick