mark (07/02/82)
At USENIX in Santa Monica, we all agreed that net.jokes.q was causing problems, and it would be renamed to ug.jokes. This would prevent anyone from getting it by accident, so that both sites and user that wanted it would have to explicitly get it. Since we don't get that newsgroup here in Columbus (by administrative mandate) I was unable to monitor the implementation of this. However, it appears that net.jokes.q is alive and well and being heavily used. Well, today the **** hit the fan. One site (I am not at liberty to say who) had a number of secretaries that read netnews. They saw net.jokes.q, got offended, and went up 3 levels of management and complained. This manager, who does not log in himself and probably didn't even know that netnews existed, was appalled, and immediately ordered netnews off that system. (This is a typical overreaction. It happened because nobody had told the manager about it beforehand, so he didn't know how useful netnews is.) Some fast talking and the production of several documented examples of how netnews has done significant good at that site got the manager to relent slightly: now they are only allowed to receive "work related news". (The good news is that this will test the limits on subscription fields in the sys file. If any other site has this policy implemented, I'd like to hear what problems you had with buffer lengths, and see your list of "work related newsgroups".) Also, in a typical management mandate from someone who has been caught by surprise, the system administrator was ordered not to tell anyone that a change had taken place. Thus, a lot of users are suddenly going to be in the dark. So here we have a concrete example of how net.jokes.q did some real harm. It nearly did the business some harm. It probably will next time, when the system administrator can't produce examples. For this reason, I'm now going to put my foot down on net.jokes.q. RIGHT NOW, WOULD EVERY SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR PLEASE PUT !net.jokes.q,!net.jokes.limerick in their ngfile and their sys file line for their own system. This will only take a minute and will break the back of this newsgroup. I'm also going to install a program that sends hate mail to the author of any net.jokes.q article. It is especially important for well connected sites to refuse these newsgroups, because this will keep many people from getting them. The sites ucbvax, npois, harpo, decvax, sri-unix, duke, houxi, eagle, and lime are probaby sufficient to kill this newsgroup. Now, everyone please understand me. I am not against dirty or offensive jokes existing, or being passed around among consenting sites. What I am against is people being ACCIDENTLY exposed to them. This tends to get people upset. The problem is that subscribing to net.jokes AUTOMATICALLY gets you net.jokes.q as well. Thus, the problem with accidents. If you want to use ug.jokes, fine. More power to you. In fact, I hope ug.jokes thrives, because it gives people a legitimate outlet for their dirty jokes. This will, in turn, keep them off net.jokes. Mark Horton
ber (07/02/82)
#R:cbosgd:-243100:harpo:9800006:000:470 harpo!ber Jul 2 13:06:00 1982 I don't think I agree. Get rid of net.jokes entirely. Perhaps net.jokes should be replaced with net.humor. Maybe that would encourage humorous submissions rather than stale jokes. So far I can't think of much that has been posted: how many netnews users does it take to change a light bulb DEC WARS AT&T merger announcement (and anything else I might have originated) Just send your articles to me and I'll decide if they're funny and appropriate. brian redman
crose (07/02/82)
If you are so mad at net.jokes.q why not just send out an all
out attack using the `u' key instead of killing the whole group.
Tell people the horros of net.jokes.q and the salvation with the
`u' key. It will save you alot of hate mail, etc..
Andy Rose (...mhuxt!crose)pcl (07/03/82)
Bell Labs Indian Hill netnews sites will no longer forward or accept net.jokes.q and net.jokes.limerick. We will, however, forward and accept the new newsgroups 'ug.all'. Paul Lustgarten Bell Labs - Indian Hill
dmh (07/09/82)
some sites are not lucky enough to have the -u option! This is the some argument as using "n" to not see lists, and all views have been exposed! END FLAME