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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!sun!chuq
From: chuq@sun.uucp (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Statistics, polls: honest, no flames
Message-ID: <3435@sun.uucp>
Date: Wed, 2-Apr-86 13:29:41 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.3435
Posted: Wed Apr  2 13:29:41 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Apr-86 01:44:04 EST
References: <2015@hao.UUCP> <3389@sun.uucp> <474@ucbjade.BERKELEY.EDU> <3417@sun.uucp> <500@ucbjade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Distribution: net
Organization: Fictional Reality, uLtd
Lines: 50

> ME:
> >On a practical level, getting rid of individual users is an administrative
> >impossibility for the net -- the only control at the user level is in the
> >hands of the SA. Getting rid of bloated newsgroups IS under net control, and
> >worth looking at.
> 
> Ok, I can't resist. We went over this problem at lunch today (random chance,
> that), and came up with the following two-step solution:
> 
> 1) a hack to inews so that it refuses to accept articles posted by anyone on
> 	a list of user@site type names.
> 
> 2) An awk script (or something similar) that takes the top 25 list, and
> 	turns it into a list for step one. Criteria should include
> 	newsgroups posted to and # of s.d. away from average.
> 
> If the backbone started running this code (or something like it), we would
> have instant, objective deletion of high-volume users on a netwide level,
> but only for a couple of weeks. And maybe, just maybe, the thought of being
> censored that way would make people think before posting.

Problems:
    o you censor people silently -- if you allow a message to be posted
    and then make it silently go away downstream, how do they know they
    were deleted from the net? Don't assume any of these people read
    net.news or read anything but the group they are posting in. You may
    get rid of the articles, but you aren't solving the problem -- they
    don't know they are being censored and don't change their ways.

    o what happens when the data from seismo is WRONG? Without a human
    in the loop, problems will definitely occur. What happens when I start
    posting forged messages causing people I don't like to get knocked off
    the net (and being knocked off, can't even complain about it!)

    o How do you keep from knocking out the people making positive 
    contributions to netnews? chris torek writes a public domain version of
    4.2 in his spare time. He posts it, to the wonderment of all. He then
    gets kicked off the net for excessive volume. Isn't this a NEGATIVE
    inducement to doing good things?

It ain't as easy as it looks. Coming up with a fair way of cutting back the
dead weight sounds good, but it has a lot of practical problems. We just
don't have the administrative tools to do it right, I think.
-- 
:From the lofty realms of Castle Plaid:          Chuq Von Rospach 
chuq%plaid@sun.COM	FidoNet: 125/84		 CompuServe: 73317,635
{decwrl,decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,pyramid,seismo,ucbvax}!sun!plaid!chuq

The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands
and hoping when a rock or a club will do -- McCloctnik the Lucid