Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!nic.MR.NET!hal!ncoast!allbery From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) Newsgroups: alt.sources.d Subject: Re: moderation of alt.sources vs. automated harangues Message-ID: <1989Oct15.161425.1638@NCoast.ORG> Date: 15 Oct 89 16:14:25 GMT References: <2024@convex.UUCP> <1989Oct13.192835.1330@talos.uucp> <1989Oct14.012800.12049@rpi.edu> <8467@boring.cwi.nl> Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) Followup-To: alt.sources.d Organization: North Coast Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, OH Lines: 61 As quoted from <8467@boring.cwi.nl> by dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter): +--------------- | Something like that. Although, if I remember correctly, it was the fear that | a moderator would inhibit distribution of some sources. But that discussion | was long ago. +--------------- That was indeed one of the sticking points, although it came up late in the discussion. Rich Salz's "editor ban" in comp.sources.unix proved that there was a point to it, but on the other hand I responded to it by specifically inviting editor postings in c.s.misc. It's more a "good moderator"/"bad moderator" problem tha anything else. Perhaps a solution is to allow moderator voting, a la newsgroup voting... but that's a different topic for a different group. +--------------- | > I think a very good | > approximation of this (ie, posted within a day of being mailed to the | > moderator) would be necessary before you got many people to agree to it. | Try comp.sources.misc (of course this requires that your mail is received | by the moderator within one day and that he looks at his mail pretty | frequently). +--------------- I look daily, networks permitting (e.g. if I can't rlogin to uunet I wait until I can or until the weekend, whichever comes first), and post daily. But I have to *get* the submissions. (hint hint ;-) +--------------- | The problem with alt.sources is of course that when you follow-up to an | article there it goes to alt.sources, unless you edit the newsgroup line. | But is alt.sources important enough to warrant measures as for | ....general? And if so, how well will the newsreading programs comply? +--------------- I think the news programs should have a general mechanism for this: a newsgroup can have a followup-to newsgroup specified, or a list of suggested followup-to newsgroups with the implicit statement that if such a list exists, followups to the original group are frowned upon. One more note on moderated newsgroups: My original intent for comp.sources.misc was to do essentially what has been proposed for a moderated alt.sources: get it out fast if it's source, reject it if not. But I ran into a snag: archivers. It seems that once you moderate a sources group, people start archiving it... and they prefer specific formats, such as all the auxiliary-header baggage. There's also the problem that once a moderator is in the loop, people expect him/her to reject or repack uuencoded arc/compress/whatever postings. So there is now a potential delay in c.s.misc. Are you sure you want that headache here? ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc allbery@NCoast.ORG uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu bsa@telotech.uucp 161-7070 (MCI), ALLBERY (Delphi), B.ALLBERY (GEnie), comp-sources-misc@backbone [comp.sources.misc-related mail should go ONLY to comp-sources-misc@] *Third party vote-collection service: send mail to allbery@uunet.uu.net (ONLY)*