Xref: utzoo news.admin:15233 news.software.b:8262 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed Message-ID: Date: 13 Jun 91 14:23:27 GMT References: <676736110.29234@mindcraft.com> Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK. Lines: 72 karish@mindcraft.com (Chuck Karish) writes: > In article mathew@mantis.co.uk writes: > |So FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A USER OF THE SYSTEM, why is it OK to silently > |throw away news that person has written, but not OK to silently throw away > |mail that person has written? > > Mathew has crossed the line from annoying repetitive (though > marginally productive) flaming to intellectual dishonesty. His > quote of Neil Rickert's article is taken out of context, in > that it ignores the second half of Neil's article which > addressed this issue directly. It wasn't "intellectual dishonesty". I didn't look at the second half of his article, since it was apparent from the first half that he had misunderstood that I was referring to the perspective of a user of the system. Since you insist, here's a reply to the entire article: In <1991Jun7.160730.11982@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes: > Firstly C-news does not silently throw away news. It reports it to the >local administrator. From the perspective of a user of the system, that does not constitute reporting the error. > Secondly email is from one person to another. One of the two should be >notified. News is from one person to several. Either the sender or the recipients should be notified. > If you can notify the recipient, you can get the message there, >so you might as well. If you can deliver a news message, then you might as well, even if it contains errors. > You are not inflicting it on many sites (mailing >lists excepted, which my earlier posting said should have stricter >standards). News is inflicted on many sites as it is. I don't think inflicting one error report instead of each bad article is a retrograde step. > If you are having trouble configuring news, you can use email to get help. >If you are having trouble configuring email you don't have much else to >fall back on, so mail systems should be somewhat tolerant and still try >to deliver. Rubbish. You can fall back to telephone or postal mail. The fact that there is an alternative to a system is not a good excuse for making that system unreliable. > On the other hand, recipients who receive bad mail, and cannot >reply directly, should complain so that the sender is pressured to fix his >broken mail system. Recipients who receive bad news and cannot handle it should complain so that the sender is pressured to fix his broken news system. >> All that I ask is that they report errors. > > They do. You just don't like whom they report the errors to. From the viewpoint of a user of the system, they do not report errors. mathew