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From: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Vote Fraud and Newsgroups
Message-ID: <1522@shark.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Sep-85 15:33:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: shark.1522
Posted: Thu Sep  5 15:33:31 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Sep-85 16:23:53 EDT
References: <838@burl.UUCP> <517@cmu-cs-k.ARPA>
Reply-To: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 70
Summary: 

In article <517@cmu-cs-k.ARPA> tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney) writes:
>A few weeks ago, I suggested that the current mindless flaming discussions
>in net.news.group be abandoned as a means of selecting new news groups.
>Instead, all new groups should begin as mailing lists; if they have high
>membership and high volume, they could be "promoted".  (Of course, some
>mailing lists, like the one I run for minority religions, should always be
>mailing lists and not become public newsgroups.)

This is an interesting idea; the current net structure doesn't seem to
support it.  Some changes would have to be made.

I suggest the following setup FOR DISCUSSION:

There are three classes of newsgroup:

Wide-Open    what we have now; anyone can post, distribution limited by
	     the Distribution: line

Moderated    we have something like this now.  Moderated mail goes to a
	     central moderation point, and is bundled and posted by the
	     program or person who filters that group.

MailingList  a new entity.  Currently mailing lists aren't handled by the
	     news software.  I propose that a mailing list be handled by
	     subscription only.  If a user at a site wants a mailing list,
	     then some upstream site(s) are requested to pass it on.  The
	     upstream sites need not keep copies of mailing list postings,
	     except for the duration of the "send" downstream.  When a
	     person wishes to reply to an article in the mailing list, the
	     article is sent to the central moderation point for the list,
	     just like any other moderated news.  The moderator of mailing
	     lists could post very brief summaries (ala mod.motss) of the
	     traffic on the list, to a central group.  The existance of
	     the list would be posted in a central place like mod.announce.
	     Maybe in a separate article?

	     Promotion of a mailing list to a moderated or open group is
	     done by adding a separate group.  Namespace for mailing list
	     is created by using the prefix mail.whatever so that if a
	     mailing list for music flamers is created, it would become
	     mail.music.flame in the  netnews namespace.

	     Subscription to a list is done by sending a request to the
	     moderator.  Only in very special cases can anyone be denied
	     read-access to a mailing list, but the moderator decides if
	     a posting is inappropriate, irrelevant, or duplicates other
	     articles in the list.

	     Creating a mailing list is done by sending mail to one of the
	     appropriately empowered net-deities or by the appropriate
	     control message.  Requests to pass the group downstream can
	     be automated, or the system administrator can choose to make
	     all requests be handled manually.

The drawbacks:  The upstream sites still have the cost of supporting the
downstream sites.  The upstream sites still have to deal with mail.  It
adds to the stuff that news has to support, and to the software which has
to be supported.

The advantages:  It provides a public software mechanism for mediating mail
lists.  The process of creating and accessing mailing lists becomes more
simple;  the frustration of trying to get onto a mailing list is alleviated.
Several current newsgroups could easily be reverted into mailing lists.

Unaddressed issues:  What happens when a mailinglist moderator decides to
move/quit/goes away?  What happens when a mailing list becomes inactive?
Mailing lists would take up space in one place, /usr/spool/news/mail instead
of many many copies per machine.  Could this cause problems?

Hutch