Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caesar.cs.montana.edu!ogccse!cvedc!nosun!qiclab!jamesd From: jamesd@qiclab.UUCP (James Deibele) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Semi-moderated newsgroups Message-ID: <3270@qiclab.UUCP> Date: 24 Nov 89 00:13:44 GMT References: <1989Nov19.223239.26100@algor2.algorists.com> <25684AE6.26256@ateng.com> <14940@bfmny0.UU.NET> Reply-To: jamesd@qiclab.UUCP (James Deibele) Organization: Qic Laboratories, Portland, Oregon. Lines: 53 In article <14940@bfmny0.UU.NET> tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) writes: >In article <25684AE6.26256@ateng.com> chip@ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes: >> I'd read these groups more often if I knew that the >>correct answers from Doug Gwyn, Guy Harris, Chris Torek, Henry Spencer, et >>al weren't often contradicted and sometimes flamed by ignorant newbies, >>especially those who flame hardest because they have Good Intentions. > >Keeps 'em honest though. Even "experts" make mistakes. Usenet would be >a poorer place if we introduced the caste system. I mean, why stop >there? You could have all sorts of intermediate privilege levels: >always allowed to CROSS-post, allowed to cross-post but only via >moderator, always allowed to post with nondefault expire, ditto only via >moderator, NEVER allowed to post, always allowed to post LONG articles, >ditto via moderator, etc etc etc. Future net.kafkaesque.flunkies await >these developments with relish... > Agreed wholeheartedly. When asking a question, you have to be prepared to sift through the replies, sorting them as to their reliability. It would be nice to have some sort of automagic "authority" rating on each post (lessee, he gets a 3 on movies, a 7 on C compilers, and a 0 on relationships), but it just ain't possible. Say you had a C question, and K&R both spoke up and said "this is the way it is" but your C compiler vendor did things their own way, so K&R would really be saying "this is the way it should be." Some bozo who happened to use the same compiler might have a higher rating, etc. That's one of the real problems when entering into a new field: whose advice is reliable and whose advice should be tossed in the bit bucket. Given enough time, you can usually see a consensus of sorts build, as in "well, I think you're wrong on this nit, but basically I agree." The problem is that it takes time for your BS filters to build up enough to protect you. There've been times when I really had wished that someone would take and filter the stuff, then resell the knowledge thus gained for a reasonable price: case in point would be using an RLL (or Perstor) controller with a drive. If it works, you get 1.5 (or 1.9) the disk space you would normally have, which is a good deal . But neither the controller manufacturer or the drive manufacturere will probably guarantee that the combination will work. It would be nice to send a message to someone who would report back that it worked 25 times, eventually failed 4 times, and failed immediately twice. As the same questions get asked over and over, the urge to respond dwindles, leaving the newbies answering instead of the "old pros." The only practical solution seems to be keeping the noise level down so that most of the old pros stick around for a reasonable amount of time as the newbies mature. (Or so it seems IMHO.) -- James Deibele jamesd@qiclab BBSs: (503) 760-1473 or (503) 761-7451 TECHBooks: The Computer Book Specialists --- Voice: (503) 646-8257 12600 SW 1st Beaverton, OR 97005 --- Book reviewers wanted for computer science & electronics - contact us for more information.