Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!bu-cs!halleys!ulowell!page From: page@ulowell.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,news.groups Subject: Moderation Message-ID: <1041@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> Date: Sat, 14-Feb-87 14:30:51 EST Article-I.D.: ulowell.1041 Posted: Sat Feb 14 14:30:51 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 15-Feb-87 05:35:26 EST References: <3459@garfield.UUCP> <5663@amdahl.UUCP> Reply-To: page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) Organization: University of Lowell Lines: 76 Xref: utgpu comp.sys.amiga:2106 news.groups:354 kim@amdahl.UUCP (Kim DeVaughn) wrote in article <5663@amdahl.UUCP>: >It is curious that the "mod.amiga" group has been active again ... >we seem to get a few atricles from it about once a week, with most >of the addresses looking like they came from Europe and/or were >gatewayed into Usenet from somewhere. Anyone know what's going on? Here's the whole poop on the moderated Amiga groups. The 'discussion' group is mod.amiga, and the 'sources' groups are mod.amiga.sources and mod.amiga.binaries. The 'discussion' group is 'moderated' from ulowell, and I am the moderator. The sources groups come from Purdue; I don't know what happened to Doc, although Purdue is still on the net. So what do I do, and why are there so few postings, and why are there articles in it now, after a long silence? The news software automagically mails articles posted to mod.amiga to me. I reformat & spell-check the articles (although I haven't been spell-checking them recently), put on the headers the way that news likes them, and post away. There aren't many articles in it because I don't get many. When the Great Renaming took place in the fall, I started posting everything to comp.sys.amiga, since mod.amiga was (reportedly) going away. After a while, I returned to posting to mod.amiga. The articles look like they all come from BITNET or ARPANET because that's where most of them come from. The ARPANET has a mail group called INFO-AMIGA, based out of Rutgers. Eliot Lear, the moderator, just grabs articles posted to comp.sys.amga and mod.amiga, edits/reformats the comp.sys.amiga articles, throws away what he doesn't like, and puts out a digest format - sort of "the best of Usenet's Amiga groups". When a reader responds, it goes to the address INFO-AMIGA@RUTGERS.ARPA, which is really pointed at me. I do my thing here, and Eliot picks it up from mod.amiga for redistribution through the ARPANET. I get very few submissions from USENET - most people prefer to post to the unmoderated group. >Most recently, Mike Meyer sent something to Purdue That would be the sources group. >Not meaning this to be a flame against Doc, but this seems typical of >moderated groups (with a few noteable exceptions like mod.risks and >[usually] mod.sources). Unfortunately, it is typical. (There are other mod groups of high-quality like mod.risks and mod.sources, I suspect you did not list them because you don't read them). Moderators are subject to: >obvious things like doing real work for one's employer, vacations, sickness, >machine outages, busted software, final exams, death, taxes, etc ...)! (For the record, moderators are volunteers). >And this is why I'm against any move to moderate comp.sys.amiga ... >it is just too unreliable The whole concept of moderated groups as we know them is changing, since it is widely recognized that they don't work very well in most configurations. New software is being written, etc. I am against making comp.sys.amiga moderated because the tools to handle the volume do not exist yet. Q: Is comp.sys.amiga going to become moderated? A: Nobody knows just yet. Probably not, but there will be some kind of newsgroup that's moderated, where the S/N level is very high and the traffic isn't overpowering. It will probably be a "best of the unmoderated group" group, for those who just want info and don't care about religious wars or getting the same answer sixteen different times. ..Bob -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. ulowell!page, page@ulowell.CSNET