Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site l5.uucp
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!sun!l5!laura
From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.news
Subject: Re: A proposal for a modified voting rule
Message-ID: <96@l5.uucp>
Date: Tue, 10-Sep-85 05:18:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5.96
Posted: Tue Sep 10 05:18:09 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Sep-85 21:16:40 EDT
References: <3215@nsc.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Distribution: net
Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco
Lines: 59
Xref: linus net.news.group:3061 net.news:3086


Guys, this business about ``one vote per site'' doesn't fix the
problem.  The people I want to hear from are not necessarily from
different sites.  Moreover, the usefulness of any group is not a
function of how low-volume it is. 4 people giving incorrect answers is
no better than 400 people doing the same.  The 400 people will cost
more,but if cost is now more important than quality or accuracy of
information then usenet has changed a lot in the 5 months I've been
away.

What do we need? Automatic removal of non-active newsgroups. Hey, this
has been discussed for years! The ability to remove newsgroups that are
no longer wanted. Net.bizarre and net.general have bit it. Now what?
The ability to stop certain long winded discussions before we generate
another meg that we do not need.

I remember a long time ago there used to be a ``what is the
meaning/etymology of FOOBAR'' discussion every 3 weeks or so.  DO NOT
POST, BUT SEND ME MAIL IF THIS IS NEWS TO YOU. *thank you*.  What we
did was to refuse to answer that question any more except by mail. I
think we need a new list of what is overdiscussed, and what is in
danger of being discussed again. (I just read net.lang.c. I fear we may
go into ``this is my brace style and if you don't use it then your
mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries'' again.)

Net.announce and net.announce.newusers is not the place to put this.
The average new user has no way of knowing that he should read this
unless he is told to do so. if he doesn't get told he will go read news
about the things he knows he is interested in, and he has no way of
knowing that net.announce.newusers was designed for him. By the time he
reads mod.newslists (if he ever does) it will be too late. Besides, the
document is huge.  I am not sure that people actually read it -- and it
only takes those that don't to start this all over again. What we need
is discussion killers in the newsgroups where we don't want the
discussion to start.  These would be non-expirable news articles which
are short.   A new user will get as his first article in
net.lang.c ``C does not have a generic null pointer. if you think it
does, you are wrong. if you want to argue the point send mail to Guy
Harris at sun!guy who has written 700 articles on the subject and will
mail you his most recent one''. Similarly the first article in net.columbia:
``this is the name of the newsgroup. Please don't agitate to have it
changed to net.shuttle. We have argued this 47 times already. If you
want to argue this some more, send mail to research!alb who has argued
this many times in the past and he will send you his most convincing
argument.''

If we killed some more perennial discussions, and stopped the flow of
bad information we would do much better than trying to restrict the
amount of news per user or per site. The per site idea is a bad one, by
the way. It penalises places like sun or research who use the concept
of a gateway machine.  Sun has a user population of about 1000 and l5
has a population of 5. Treating them the same way would be unfair.
There are also certain people whose stuff is consistently good. I don't
care how much they post, and don't want to penalise them over some
``law of averages''.
-- 
Laura Creighton		(note new address!)
sun!l5!laura		(that is ell-five, not fifteen)
l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa