christian@geneva.rutgers.edu (09/30/89)
I have beefed up the script that I use to do moderation to clean up handling of articles that I reject. First, I now keep a record, so I can answer people who ask whether I rejected an article from them or it just didn't get here. (Normally it's the latter.) Also, I will now send mail back to the poster whenever I reject an article. The explanation is usually fairly brief. Unfortunately, it's very common that I can't get mail back to you. I get lots of "no such host", "no such user" and "sendmail balks (errno = 3.14159)" responses when I try. At some point there's not much I can do. I start sending rejection letters with mixed feelings. Quite often a NAK from me seems to become simply an invitation for a flame. However it seems very impolite for things simply to vanish into a black hole, so I guess I need to do it. However I am not going to argue about decisions either. There's no way to be absolutely consistent in this business. I'd have to spend months moderating each group of postings, and even then I couldn't guarantee absolutely objective standards. It is the case now and then that I realize afterwards ways I could have done things better. In the last group I posted something, and then ran across a second posting from the same person saying essentially the same thing. (Even some of the wording matched.) Had I been really on the ball, I would have made two passes over the postings, noticed that they overlapped, and combined them into one posting. Had there been fewer postings that night, I probably would have allowed both. But I passed only the first. That's the sort of judgement call that comes with having a moderated group.